VLAD

Vlad is a well shot and reasonably well acted movie, unfortunately it's not very well written. Consequently, it's boring and doesn't make much sense.

There's this group of four students who have come to Romania from around the world to work on their theses, all of which have something to do with Vlad Tepes a.k.a. Dracula. One of them has Vlad's necklace which will awaken the "Tormented One" if it gets too near him, but can also put him back down if it's returned to it's rightful place i.e. Vlad's tomb. Why or how this happens is not really explained. It's also got some flashback and time travel functions that don't make sense either.

The film attempts to blend the historical Vlad Tepes with the legendary Dracula. It doesn't do either very well. The historical parts are not entirely accurate and the legendary parts are, well... less than legendary. Except for the flashbacks, we don't see Vlad until nearly an hour into the movie. When he finally does arrive he's pretty lame. No teeth, no biting, hardly any blood. There's a little face morphing, wall climbing, and a lot of grabbing people by the throat and throwing them around.

I think Vlad is intended to be suspenseful and scary, but it's just not.

Billy Zane is given top billing, but he only plays a supporting part. If only The Phantom had been a hit, he might not have to be in lame movies like this. On the other hand The Lord of the Rings was a huge hit, but that didn't stop John Rhys-Davies from narrating the opening segment of Vlad or staring in crap like Dragon Storm.



Francesco Quinn was excelent as Syed Ali in season 2 of 24. Sadly his talents are wasted here as the bloodless Vlad.



Vlad gets two out of five bloody crosses.