Dracula 2000

Dracula 2000
Dracula 2000

2000, Dir. Patrick Lussier
Starring:
Gerard Butler, Justine Waddell
RATING
NO DEES
What a stinking, steaming, festering, putrid, pungent, odious, mountainous pile of dung this movie is. Any horror buff should be greivously offended and horrified that there is a demographic out there that thinks movies like Dracula 2000 are good. I'm willing to bet that 75% of the people in that theater couldn't tell you who Bela Lugosi was if you put a gun to their head. I honestly don't care if anybody who doesn't agree with me on this one tries to call me a movie snob, this was so bad I wanted to fight someone. The only reason I sat the whole thing out was so I could tear it to shreds on this website. I hereby call for the heads of absolutely everybody involved with the making of Dracula 2000. Well, except for Jeri Ryan, bring her back alive.
I'm not going to go through this plot blow by blow, it's too painful. I'm just gonna throw a few things out there for y'all so you know what we're up against. First of all, when exactly did filmmakers decide that the only way to scare audiences was through loud sudden noises? The art of subtlety has apparently been lost. Second of all, in this era of product placement it would seem that the Virgin chain of record stores financed this fuckin' thing. I can't think of a better reason to boycott. On to a meatier matter - the atrocious acting and laughable dialogue. Example: After killing the vampirized Omar Epps, our hero exclaims "Don't fuck with an antiques dealer". While in the throes of sexual ecstasy with Dracula, Lucy confides; "I was named after the 'Peanuts' character". The supporting characters are terrible; particularly the priest and Van Helsing's sidekick. The group of theives quickly turn into idiots after stealing Drac's coffin.

I just know we can whip the Mystery Men!
The Dracula portrayed in this flick is just a little scarier than Leslie Nielsen in Dead and Loving It but not quite as scary as Marty Feldman in Every Home Should Have One. He's not bad, he's not good, he's just underwhelming. And he looks like a cross between Bono and a cleaned up Trent Reznor. To make matters worse, the poor bastard has to struggle with some of the most inane dialogue any screen vampire has ever had to utter. When wandering through the streets of New Orleans, he spots a Monster Magnet video on a huge screen. After watching the explosions and gyrating women he proclaims; "Brilliant". Now I don't give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut what kind of setting or era or whatever Dracula is in, he would never, ever think that Monster Magnet is cool. I just can't accept that. Then, when Mary's roommate Lucy invites Drac in she offers him coffee. Aping the famous line "I don't drink ... wine" that Bela said in the first Dracula, he replies "I don't drink ... coffee". Instead of tribute, it comes off as mocking. And the origin of Drac that's presented in this film is ri-goddamn-diculous, literally. Dracula is the soul of Judas Iscariot, who screwed up his suicide attempt and therefore became immortal. The train of thought on the part of the writers must have gone something like this:
Dumb writer 1: We have to create some kind of controversy to surround the film because noone's gonna see it on its own merit.
Dumb writer 2: Well, what group's easy to piss off?
Dumb writer 1: I know, the Catholics got all fired up over Stigmata!
Dumb writer 2: Yeah, they're easy to piss off! Right on dude!
As mentioned before, the rest of the cast is equally unremarkable. They couldn't even get top-of-the-line B list celebrities and had to settle for one of the clowns from That '70s Show, Jeri Ryan, and Vitamin C, who is apparently a pop singer. This I can tell because she was shown in the record store in front of a rack of her own CDs. This film isn't exactly gonna help them fly off the rack either. Perhaps she should've stood in front of the Kathie Lee CD and associated that with this flick, thereby saving us all from that wailing harpy. My final gripe is the lack of attention to detail. It is emphasized that Dracula is immortal. Van Helsing tells us that he has tried all the traditional methods on Drac and he has survived them all. So how does Drac die? Sunlight, the most traditional vampire killer of them all. He's also being hanged, which shouldn't be too much of a big deal since he's been shape-shifting and turning into mist the whole damn movie. Another example is Van Helsing himself. He's been keeping himself alive for hundreds of years with infusions of Dracula's blood, which he has passed on to his daughter. She survives vampirization and a fall from a good height, but Van Helsing takes a stake through the neck and dies. They both have Drac blood, right? So they both should be immortal, right? I guess we'll have to wait for the sequel which God willing will come long after I'm gone.

Hypnotism. That explains everything.
IN CLOSING: The above still must be how they convinced the actors to be involved in this shit. I don't have enough words in my vocabulary to adequately explain the depths to which this film sucks. There is absolutely nothing that I can recommend about this. I'd rather sandpaper a bobcat's ass in a telephone booth than watch this again. Anybody who thought this was good should be forced to watch Nosferatu, Bela's Dracula, Hammer Studio's Horror of Dracula, and Werner Herzog's 1979 Nosferatu. Then they should be beaten within an inch of their lives.