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Film: Dracula: The Imapler
Year: 2013
Director: Derek Hockenbrough
Writer: Diana Angelson, Daniel Anghelcev, Derek Hockenbrough and Steve Snyder
Starring: Diana Angelson, Christian Gehring and Christina Collard
Review:
This film begins with two men kneeling next to each other. One is speaking in a foreign language and he is played by Gregory Lee Kenyon. The other one is Luca Kahn. Kenyon is told to sacrifice him and he slits his throat. He then drinks the blood and yells, looking up to the sky and his eyes change.
We then shift to a party where we meet a group of friends. There is a rich guy, played by Christian Gehring. His girlfriend is played by Christina Collard. We then have Teo Celigo and his girlfriend, played by Marcienne Dwyer. There is a guy who is always on his phone and has a gambling issue, played by Rocco Nugent. His girlfriend is played by Katelynn Derengowski. The final member is Mark Jacobson, who has issues with overeating and the heaviest of them.
Celigo and Dwyer go off by themselves and we learn that they are both virgins. Celigo gives her a promise ring and tells her that he loves her. She wants to lose her virginity to him that night, but he tells her that he wants to wait until their wedding night.
They return to the group and Gehring reveals that he had a dream of a hot woman with large breasts. She wanted him to come to Castle Dracula in Transylvania. It takes some convincing, but he gets his friends to join him to come to Romania with him. There is a slight problem though. He lies to them all about the state of the castle.
The problem that they are running into is that they cannot get to the castle with a car. They have to take a train and then hike up there. They meet with a guide who leads them to the castle and it is night by the time they arrive. The guide doesn’t come in, but tells them that the food they have will need to last them for two days, when he will bring more. They enter.
They thought they would be alone, but they soon learn that isn’t the case. There is a woman who claims to have been taking care of the castle since she was a little girl; she is played by Diana Angelson. She takes them to their rooms. She takes a liking to Celigo and Dwyer notices. She doesn’t care for Angelson.
The group settles in. Gehring and Collard go off to a room with mannequins to make love. Nugent and Derengoswki get into an argument, because he won’t get off his phone and all he is worried about is a bet he has going. He can’t get service though. Jacobson goes off and starts to eat their food. The problem though is that, he is eating a lot more than he should. There is a scream and it is from Collard. Gehring and her are yelling at him for eating too much. The group comes into the room. Angelson also joins them, telling everyone that she took some of the food before he got to it and dinner is ready.
They then settle down into a room together. Celigo had found a book about the history of Vlad the Impaler. It is given to Angelson to read and she starts to tell the story. Gehring cuts her off and saying that they just want to hear the good part, about him becoming Dracula.
She tells this story and we see it play out. It is the beginning scene we saw. He became the monster that he is to protect his wife and people. It also looks like he might have turned her and then disappeared into the night.
After the story, everyone goes back to their rooms. Gehring and Collard go back to make love. Celigo and Dwyer go to their room to go to bed. Nugent and Derengowski get into an argument about him not getting off his phone. He goes off into the night. Jacobson goes to find more food and finds a roasted chicken. He starts to eat it and then three odd men come in. They stuff food into his mouth and then they disappear. He has a rat stuffed in his mouth.
Derengowski comes to Celigo and asks him to find her boyfriend, because he is missing. He goes to Gehring and asks him to help. They get into an argument, but Gehring agrees to help. We then see though that Nugent has his phone stolen by a boy and chases him. He is taken to Angelson, who impales him with a spear, calling him a demon for being lazy. Gehring doesn’t search too hard though, as he ends up back at Derengowski’s room and they make love. Celigo ends up in Angelson’s room and she comes on to him. He does leave and avoids telling Dwyer where he ended up, not wanting to upset her, but does admit to seeing her.
They continue to look for their friends and find that they have been killed. They decide to flee, but no matter what path they take, they end up back at the castle. Can they get away? Or will they all meet their fate? Angelson looks just like Kenyon’s wife, is she a vampire or she is a descendant of them?
I have to say that I did like this film taking the story of Dracula, which is historically based on someone that did exist, and doing something different since there are so many different versions of this story. I like this one tried to do. There is an interesting concept in this film where the people are being sacrificed for committing different sins. It is definitely a biblical, old testament feel to it by punishing with death after doing things that are not considered to be that severe in our society, but still not making any of them right. I also really liked the twist at the end, even though the last image is your typical horror film cliché.
This film does have its issues though. The first one that I had with this is the acting is subpar. The next is the film slightly boring to me. It has a low running time and this group of friends really doesn’t seem to realistically be ‘friends’. It doesn’t feel natural and more a like a film, which hurt it for me. The twist was good, but the plausible is missing at times. That tells me, that it wasn’t as thought out as it should be. I feel the film had a good concept, but the execution wasn’t done well enough for me.
Now with that said, I would probably avoid this version. There are a lot of Dracula adaptations that are out there and this one is subpar. It could have been better as it took a different take and had a good concept. The execution of this was poor though. The acting wasn’t very good either. The film does have some nudity, but that doesn’t do much to save this film. It does randomly introduce more characters, but we don’t know who is real and who is just in someone’s mind. I did like the twist at the end, but the last image is a horror film cliché. There are much better versions out there and would recommend seeing those instead of this one.
My Rating: 4 out of 10