First Wave Of DRACULA UNTOLD Reviews Are Pretty Vlad

"Making his feature debut, director Gary Shore displays little flair for the action sequences, with such stylistic devices as using Vlad’s POV for several scenes adding to the overall cheesiness. Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless’ muddled screenplay seems so intent on providing a Maleficent-style revisionist spin that it’s hard to believe that this heroic and sympathetic figure will ever wind up tormenting the nightmares of children for centuries to come." - Frank Scheck

"For about the first hour of its running time, “Dracula Untold” is far too restrained and tasteful, and it certainly suffers from its tediously noble hero; it's well made but fatally lacking in thrills or excitement. There are some modest battles here and there, but only Gadon's lovely face seems truly worthy of the camera's time until the last half hour, when the film springs to at least half life with several very imaginative images that make use of swarms of bats." - Dan Callahan

"It's an underwhelming debut from director Gary Shore. The special effects just don’t seem, well, special; while anyone expecting a scary old time will be sorely disappointed. Po-faced and humourless, the story also feels stripped bare, lacking any real flesh on its bones. Attempting to play to the same crowd as Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula did, it never quite gets there. The cast sink their teeth in but the resulting film is surprisingly bloodless. " - James Mottram

"It’s clear that Dracula Untold is gunning for the superhero market in its rebranding of the character as a Batman meets Superman meets Nosferatu hybrid, yet its lack of presence and identity does it no favours. And while Evans has the look and the chops to become a blockbuster megastar, he needs a much better film than Dracula Untold to make that promised ascension a reality." - Matt

"Though the title suggests that director Gary Shore and screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are convinced they’ve hit on a new angle, this feels like a feature-length expansion of the prologue of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula." - Kim Newman

"“Dracula Untold” is too high-minded to let go into the kind of energetic, B-movie escapism a director like John Carpenter or Paul W.S. Anderson might have brought to the same material, while the material itself is too thin to support the heavy-handed Wagnerian approach. The result is finally something neither here nor there — a vampire movie with nothing at stake." - Scott Foundas

Luke Evans (Fast & Furious 6, Immortals) stars in Dracula Untold, the origin story of the man who became Dracula. Gary Shore directs and Michael De Luca produces the epic action-adventure that co-stars Sarah Gadon, Dominic Cooper, Diarmaid Murtagh and Samantha Barks.