In Defense of Dracula 2000
Image property of Miramax Films
*This post contains spoilers for Dracula 2000. If you don’t want to know anything about the film before watching, stream it on HBO Max and then come back!*
When you ask any horror fans their favorite horror movie, they rarely mention any film from the 2000s.
A rebrand of horror was ushered in after the teen meta-horror hit Scream was released in 1996. The genre shifted to more modern sentiments and needed a refresh from the mindless 1980s and early 1990s slashers. The teens had technology now! Cell phones were a thing! It was the dawn of a new age for society and horror films.
Each horror decade has its hallmarks that reflect the period. The 70s had gritty, low-budget exploitation films, the 80s had morality tale slashers, and the 2000s had angst, nu-metal, and vampires.
In 23 years ago on December 22, 2000, Patrick Lussier, editor of many of Wes Craven’s films from New Nightmare to Scream, released the dark and sexy Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000 (milking that Wes Craven connection for all it was worth). The cast was star-studded for 2000: Christopher Plummer, Jonny Lee Miller, Colleen Fitzpatrick (also known as Vitamin C), Omar Epps, Louisiana’s own Shane West, and none other than Gerard Butler in the titular role. The film was a modest box office success, recouping $47.1 million of its $54 million budget but earning an additional $32 million in video rentals upon its release. Critically, the film was a failure. It currently holds a critic’s score of 17% on Rotten Tomatoes (against only 69 reviews) and a 26 on Metacritic (a generally more accurate movie rating system). However, the audience reviews of the film sit at 39% and 7.6/10, respectively. I’m here to tell you: the critics are wrong on this one!
Dracula 2000 follows Christopher Plummer’s “Matthew” (Abraham) Van Helsing, a rare artifacts collector in London, and his apprentice Simon (Jonny Lee Miller). When a group of thieves steal his most valuable and deadly artifact, Matthew and Simon fly across the world to track it down in New Orleans while searching for Van Helsing’s long-lost daughter, Mary, along the way. The artifact? Dracula OBVIOUSLY.
Recently, the media in our society has become somewhat sexless and puritanical. General audiences, especially young people, seem to be highly averse to seeing sex and intimacy onscreen. As a result, our horror has become sexless as well, an odd 180 for a genre whose origin and ethos are rooted in sexual commentary. This aversion has trickled down into vampire films as well. With shows and movies like Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass, André Øverdal’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and even Chris McKay’s Renfield (sorry, Nick), audiences are being gifted with thoroughly unsexy depictions of Dracula and vampires. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the character. Dracula’s power stems from seduction. If he lacks the sex appeal and charm, how is he supposed to seduce young, repressed virgins?
Dracula 2000 dares to say, “What if Dracula were hot and played by an unknown sexy Scottish man?”. But even more so, it dares to revitalize and breathe new life into the Dracula myth.
(Spoilers Ahead!)
Dracula 2000 sticks to the usual vampire conventions–no walking in sunlight, no entering houses uninvited, no reflection in mirrors or video cameras. But they introduce some new lore as well--Dracula is repulsed by all Christian iconography (he smugly calls the Bible “Propaganda” when Simon attempts to use it against him), he’s vulnerable to silver, he speaks Aramaic, and his origins date back even further than Vlad the Impaler. So, who is he really?
In the film’s climax, Dracula captures Mary and brings her to a rooftop where a giant art deco neon crucifix, complete with a crucified Jesus, is displayed. There, Dracula shows Mary something he’s never shown another–his life before he became a vampire. Dracula is none other than Judas Iscariot(!), Jesus’ betrayer. When Judas, wracked with guilt after turning over Jesus to the Romans, attempts to hang himself at sunset, God punishes him by turning him into an immortal, bloodthirsty creature of the night.
Although this seems like an absurd gimmick on the surface, it actually….makes sense. It creates a richer backstory for a figure who we’ve seen depicted on the screen dozens of times since his birth in 1897. This iteration of Dracula is full of untameable rage–rage that God would forsake him and punish him for a plan that was by His design, for a plan where Judas played the unknowing pawn. “You knew this would come to pass. It was my destiny to betray you,” he pleads to the crucifix. But Dracula also boasts of his ironic revenge against God. “Now I drink the blood of your children; I give them more than just eternal life; I give them what they crave most. All the pleasure you would deny them forever. You made the world in your image. Now, I make it in mine”. The spite and the hopelessness that Butler harnesses as he angrily spits this dialogue to the crucifix is oddly captivating. In the ultimate final battle between Mary and Dracula, he reveals that he’s TRIED to kill himself over the years but that God “won’t have him.” Mary counters with, “Have you ever asked?”. It isn’t until Dracula finally forgives God and himself that he can finally see the sunrise and is set ablaze from its light. Heady stuff for a ’90s low-budget vampire movie!
Dracula 2000 never overstays its welcome–it’s a crisp 99 minutes with a fantastic nu-metal soundtrack, beautiful New Orleans visuals, and a unique spin on the source material. Yes, it’s a little corny. And maybe it won’t resonate with you as much as it does with me (hello, Catholic trauma!). But if you’re looking for a campy, sexy vampire flick, pop on Dracula 2000. And then let me know what you think.