review: Dracula: The Rules of the Beast

Fun fact: Count Dracula has been played on screen more often than any other fictional character save for Sherlock Holmes. Having found great success with the modernization of Holmes in Sherlock, producer/ writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat have now turned their attention to the most famous vampire of all time, Dracula, in a new series available only on Netflix. As seemingly the one person on Earth who never could accept Gatiss and Moffat's Holmes in the modern setting, I was relieved to learn that Dracula is indeed set in the 19th Century.

The first half of the first episode of Dracula is an amazing thing to behold. Critic Brian Tallerico is right to say that the style is remarkably reminiscent of Francis Ford Coppola's highly underrated 1992 adaptation of the same story, in which London real estate lawyer Jonathan Harker (played by a notoriously miscast Keanu Reeves in Coppola's version, but here played by John Heffernan, in an Emmy-worthy performance) visits the creepy, exotic land of Transylvania to conduct business for the mysterious count. As the story goes, Harker gradually realizes he's not just a guest, but a prisoner in Castle Dracula.

The story of Harker's emotional and physical torment, as he fears he may never see his beloved fiancee again, as his host, by unknown methods, slowly drains the life from him, is told here by artists who seem to be at the top of their game. So many people deserve kudos for this episode: director Jonny Campbell, not afraid to go over the top in depicting Harker's nightmare; actor Heffernan, whose descent from calm and confidence to insanity and terror is a master-class in acting; composers David Arnold and Michael Price, whose creepy score mixes beauty and terror, cinematographer Tony Slater Ling, production designer Arwel Jones, are just the first few people who come to mind.

Indeed, the only thing noticeably wrong with Dracula is . . . . well . . . Dracula. Oh sure, actor Claes Bang can be charming, and lord knows he's got the eyebrows for the role, But he's a bit jowly, a bit too paunchy to play the good count, in my opinion. Now that's a nitpick, sure, but it was far from the only problem with the presentation of the title character. When Dracula first shows up, Bang is slathered with such an excess of old-age make-up, he's actually strongly reminiscent of -- now here's an obscure reference, but man does it fit the bill -- Dan Aykroyd's elderly judge character in Nothing but Trouble. In that film, the ridiculous amount of make-up was intentional, meant to be played for laughs. Here, it's a distraction.

But then it gets worse. As in Coppola's version, the initially decrepit Dracula grows younger as his prisoner, Harker, grows weaker. But the young Dracula is all wrong. He peppers his 19th century character's lines with anachronistically modern phrases, poking holes in the masterfully painted canvass that director Campbell and his cohorts have worked so hard to achieve. Later, after plot twists steer the story away from the events depicted in Bram Stoker's original novel and its many adaptations (I hear the story returns to its Stoker roots in later episodes), Dracula gloats and taunts and struts about like a modern-day comic book villain, bragging about his powers, making groaningly bad puns, and constantly reminding you that Hey, This is the New Dracula!! It's really quite mind-boggling that the filmmakers would go to such great lengths to create an atmosphere of class and dread -- and succeed so spectacularly -- only to debase it by reducing Dracula to a collection of anachronisms and "hey, I'm a villain!" cliches. It got to the point where I half expected Dracula to start making modern-day pop-culture references. Thankfully, it never gets quite that bad -- but it got bad enough that I could see it going in that direction if pushed only a nudge farther.

You may expect me to say otherwise, but the bizarre presentation of the title character wasn't quite enough to ruin all of the excellent work the filmmakers had done up to this point. After the early scenes which devote so much attention to the detail of Stoker's earliest chapters, only for the writers to suddenly steer in unexpected directions, I have to admit I'm very curious to see how they manage to steer back to the Stoker text. And damn if this presentation isn't absolutely lovely to look at, a wonderful reminder that our most beautiful cinematic images are often, ironically, those of gothic horror. And I honestly don't mind when the writers decide to explore new directions and stray away from the familiar story for a bit. But please let's not make the King of Vampires into an 80s action movie villain. That's not what I tuned in for.