Bram Stoker’s Dracula

18127 min

Before Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire, Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s gothic classic Dracula, marked the intersection between prestige, horror and blockbuster cinema. Purporting to be a faithful adaptation of Stoker’s novel, the film follows the young solicitor Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) on his journey to Transylvania to sell property in London to Count Dracula. There he is seduced by the Count and his vampire brides while encountering fantastical wonders and monstrous horrors in equal measure. But it is around the figure of Dracula himself that the film centres, in its biggest deviation from the novel. While cursed with a bloodlust, Gary Oldman’s Dracula is driven by love to pursue Harker’s fiancé Mina Murray (Winona Ryder), the reincarnation of his wife Elizabetta, transforming him from monster to Gothic romantic hero. Oldman’s Dracula embodies every incarnation of Stoker’s vampire from a century’s worth of adaptations, luxuriating in line-deliveries that echo Bela Lugosi’s iconic Count while transmogrifying from the ancient warlord to the modern dandy, a lupine beast to hordes of rats, the dashing Prince Vlad to the emaciated, shadowy Nosferatu. The film is dripping with Gothic excess, expressed through the operative musical score by Wojciech Killar, the opulent costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and the textured and rich colour palette of Michael Ballhaus’ cinematography. The film is a delicious cocktail of gothic pleasures, a tribute to the history of horror cinema, and a must-see on the big screen.