Vampires are sexy and Bram Stoker's Dracula He knows it. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and featuring a cast that includes Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Gary Oldman, it's a sumptuous, shocking and highly erotic horror film, so tense it's almost unbearable.
It's grand, operatic, over-the-top, and unafraid to be ridiculous. No wonder it's so beloved. It's one of the best movies on Prime Video for goths, movie lovers, and anyone else who wants a film they can, oh yeah, sink their teeth into.
See in the
In the past they did things differently, and by past I mean about 30 years ago: when Bram Stoker's Dracula It came out in 1992 and was a breath of fresh air (albeit with a slight coffin-like scent) compared to the rather tired Dracula movies we had grown accustomed to. That's not to say there hadn't been some great vampire movies in the years leading up to its release. The missing childAnyone? – but we had moved quite far from the true gothic horror of Bram Stoker’s 1897 story.
As Stoker's name in the title indicates, this film was an attempt to address that problem, but he was there primarily to avoid a lawsuit: the author's name is in the title because another studio held the rights to the film in the singular. Dracula.
It's a beautiful production. Roger Ebert wrote that “the sets are grand opera unbridled, a gothic extravaganza interspersed with Victorian London of gas lamps and fog-shrouded streets, rascals in top hats and mean girls in bustiers,” and that exuberance helps distract from some of the clunkier dialogue and Keanu Reeves' less-than-stellar acting: “I enjoyed the movie simply for the way it looked and felt,” Ebert said.
Gary Oldman was an inspired choice for the role of the Count. As The Guardian put it in a 2022 retrospective review, “Oldman’s performance is outstanding”; he is “the fierce, anguished Count who hundreds of years ago renounced God and embraced an eternity of parasitic horror in his rage at the wrongful death of his Countess.” As for Keanu, it was just Keanu: “Reeves plays Jonathan with that innocent, slightly lethargic calm that audiences would come to know and love over the next three decades.”
As far as Esquire is concerned, it is “more than just gothic horror. It is a love letter to filmmaking,” a “deafening thunder in an endless list of otherwise forgettable Dracula movies.” Critic Dom Nero argues that the film “isn't much different from Apocalypse Nowa stunning work of horror that is so packed with ideas and ambition that it always seems on the verge of complete self-immolation.”
