DRACULA REBORN : HORROR FILM REVIEW

There is a theory that ever since the release of Scream,  slasher films lost their ability to be scary and relevant.  It's a theory I can understand as the film expertly deconstructed and poked fun at so many of the tropes and themes that had become so cliched in horror's most purest and simplest of sub genres  After watching What We Do In the Shadows  I was left wondering if this would now be the case with vampire films. What We Do in The Shadows was a pitch perfect mickey take at what the Vampire films  had become. Would films such as Dracula Reborn be sullied by the impact of a film that turned vampires into a group of sun fearing losers?  Or could vampire films survive?

I'm not sure about other vampire films, but Dracula Reborn couldn't even survive a weekend in Cork after a month long extensive training session with Bear Grylls, let alone the impact of a genre busting movie like WWDITS.  Dracula Reborn has probably done more damage to the vampire film than any amount of jokes from a New Zealand comedy troop.   

Terrible acting. a ponderous plot and a direction that is so lacking in energy or passion you start praying that someone puts a stake through your own heart.  When will directors realise that you have to have some sort of connection with the characters of the film.  It doesn't mean you have to like them, I'm all for rooting for the bad guy.  But when every single character has you wishing they would just get of your TV screen you just know this director and screenwriter knows nothing about making a film. These were either terrible dull empty characters or in the case of the short American extremely annoying to the point where you hoped his death would be long and painful.  

Sometimes decent acting can save a poor film, especially when the dialogue is pretty poor(in this case the dialogue is), no such luck here.  You begin to think the director should have called cut two minutes after principle shooting begun when the most lifeless thing on the screen isn't the vampires, but the performance from the  four main leads.   

Which brings us to the vampires.  I'll give the make up artists top marks for their Nosferatu inspired vampires, but other than that these vampires are  probably the worst ever depiction of vampires to ever be committed to screen, and yes I am including Twilight in this.  

I get the impression that the bald vampire must have had a birthday recently, and that he got a brand new cloak as a present. He must have been very happy and proud with it as this can be the only explanation as to why he spends the whole film flapping it around  He must have been desperate for someone to say "Nice cape I love that lining". The last time I saw this amount of over the top  cape flapping the Phantom Raspberry Blower was terrorizing old London town.  

The cape billowing is the least of this vampires problem.  I don't mind camp vampires, I'm sure there is room for every type of vampire in vampire society. When it crosses the line from camp to embarrassing,  to such a  point where even the cast of Rentaghost would think he was over acting you know this film has serious problems.  He  isn't even capable of sucking blood properly.  Every time he does it he flings his head up mid suck and gasps for breath, it as though he forgets to breath while doing it.  I bet he gasps and goes "ahhh" every time he takes a sip of a cold beverage, yes it is that annoying.  

And what is it with the CGI blood, could  no one spring for a bottle of supermarket budget ketchup, that would have looked more realistic than what they did in this film.  Someone really needs to explain blood splatters to the special effects guy.  Blood only splatters from an open wound.  If you bite someone on the right hand side of their neck it doesn't gush out of the left hand side.  This terrible attention to detail is just another symptom of the lazy film making process that this film reeks of.  

The film is so bad, even the title character is too embarrassed to show face. Dracula spends the whole of the film under a hooded cape (do you think they got a job lot?).  I bet he wishes he was reborn as a werewolf, at least that way he wouldn't have to suffer through one of the worst horror films ever made.