The Latest adaptation of the Dracula tale, it’s a familiar story at this point. Fuckin Count Orlock in the Carpathian mountains, that dude is nooo good. While definitely some horror and gore here, overall it has a lot of stomach-licking queasiness to it, an unsettling of the nethers that shouldn’t be unsettled. Ominous unsettlings. Not even stomach-calming Schnapps can cure these musty bubblings.
Above all else, this film looks stunning, from start to finish. Shot amazingly well, with a great eye to detail to present a damn near flawless period piece here, too, all in desaturated color palettes. Nicely placed camera shots that present the Count as obscure as possible even while standing right there, but still showing enough to know...that dude ain’t right. Unfortunately I think he has a suction hose disconnected somewhere, so much sucking. The new wife Ellen? At least she’s a little better than the Wooden Winona. But even the beauty Isabelle Adjani in Werner Herzog’s version is pretty breathy and mopey, and sheeeit, maybe it was just the times. It was, actually, probably just the times. And the bloodletting. And the ether.
Other than that, pretty well done pacing from start to finish. But after starting to read the original Bram Stoker book again after viewing Herzog’s version, I realized after getting past Jonathan Harker’s escape? Kinda fkn boring for a pretty long stretch there. A fantastic adaptation here, with a few new variances to keep it interesting. I wrote 1938 instead of 1838 for some reason in my notes, and that could have made a much more engaging story, methinks. However, The drama here is well done, but yeah, not too feelsy. Competent and clinical, but kinda utter lack of the feels. At least this one is always visually interesting to the end.
