Dracula Rising 2002 Horror Movie Review

Quickly following the release of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” “Dracula Rising” is an obvious attempt to cash in on the blockbuster hit of Francis Ford Coppola. This is nothing unusual, familiar tactics in the market for small studios, and what really matters is the film itself. Sadly “Dracula Rising” is very boring.


Theresa (Stacey Travis) is an art restorer traveling to Eastern Europe. Christopher Atkins (yes, the boy in “The Blue Lagoon”) is Vlad, son of Vlad the Impaler, and younger Vlad believes that Theresa is a reincarnation of his long-dead sweetheart when he was a monk 500 years ago.


Now I have told you the story, which is a pretty familiar one, but is still OK. “Dracula Rising,” however, tells it very slowly with countless flashbacks and overacting. It is strange, but “Dracula Rising” sometimes forgets it is a vampire film. It does not have much blood, but instead it includes one lengthy “love scene,” one car explosion and one miniature set of “the underworld” where one character hurls an animated lightening to his opponent, very cheesy effects you see in old sci-fi films.


“Dracula Rising” is produced by Roger Corman, who two years later produced “Burial of the Rats” for TV, based on a great short story from the author of “Dracula.” For this film he again uses the source material from Stoker, but the film’s content has almost nothing to do with the book. Sometimes he produces a decent adaptation of gothic novels - “Game of Death” (“aka The Suicide Club”) is worth watching - but as for “Dracula Rising” this is a big disappointment.