"Dracula Untold" (2014) Or: A Toothless Attempt at Pathologizing A Really, Really Bad Dude

In "Dracula Untold," historical accuracy takes a backseat to cinematic flair, offering a bloodless take on a legendary horror icon.

Released in 2014, Dracula Untold is a perfectly competent movie if you take it at face value—a vampire horror action movie that oddly parallels 2021’s Morbius. Centered around a young Vlad Draculea, his wife, Mirena, and his son, Ingeras, Dracula Untold is less of an action-adventure horror epic, and more of an exploration of trauma and the consequences of war. Sultan Mehmed II, the central antagonist, seeks to invade the entirety of Europe, thus forcing Vlad to give him one thousand young boys to serve in his army as Janissaries. When Vlad refuses and attempts to appeal to Mehmed’s humanity, Mehmed sweetens the deal: one thousand young boys and Vlad’s young son, Ingeras, who will serve as Mehmed’s indentured servant. This serves as a catalyst for the ensuing events of the movie; Vlad becomes a vampire in order to defeat the Turks, in a scene featuring a gloriously campy performance from Charles Dance, and completely obliterates the Turks. However, he also loses his wife, Mirena, culminating in a movie ultimately less about vampires and war, but more of a philosophical questioning about how far one would go—and how much they’re willing to forfeit—in the pursuit of total power.

Dracula Untold has seen somewhat of a fan resurgence over the last few years, and while critics were less than pleased with the movie, it was a veritable box office success, grossing $217 million against a $70 million budget. Written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, the duo known best for Madame Web, Morbius, Gods of Egypt, and, oddly enough, Netflix’s Lost in Space, and directed by Gary Shore, known best for the Game of War: Fire Age advertisements starring Kate Upton, the movie was originally meant to be a part of Universal’s “Dark Universe,” which was an “Avengers-style universe based on its collection of iconic monsters, including Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Mummy.” Ultimately, Universal’s Dark Universe never came to fruition, and was shelved indefinitely upon the release (and critical and commercial failure) of 2017’s Tom Cruise vehicle The Mummy.

While critics panned Dracula Untold, audiences told a different story. The first three pages of comments upon viewing the YouTube comments for the official trailer under Universal Studios’ YouTube channel echo a similar sentiment: that Dracula Untold is deeply underrated and a compelling, somewhat historically accurate, monster origin story. An article by Collider, titled “Why ‘Dracula Untold’ Is Worth Revisiting as an Intriguing Monster Origin”, written by Michael John Petty, opines that Dracula Untold’s take on Dracula “is fascinating, especially given the ties to the historical Vlad the Impaler." Per Petty, Dracula Untold is a “monster origin story that, honestly, gets a bit of a bad rap, especially for how well put together the whole thing is.” Petty asserts that while the film itself is fictional, that the writers’ take on Vlad Tepes is “a compelling one" and that by “seeing the story from Dracula's point of view, we can further understand, and even possibly support, his decision to become a vampire, especially in light of the impending threat of the Ottoman Empire.”

Is Dracula Untold a compelling take on preexisting vampire lore? In my opinion, it’s a toothless bit of fanfiction that seeks to redeem a wholly irredeemable historical figure, but does so via rewriting history to benefit the agenda of the film. While Dracula Untold features well-choreographed action sequences and competent acting, it is largely overwhelmed by glaring historical inaccuracies, weak writing, and thin, one-dimensional characters, making for a movie that, while entertaining, falls apart in accordance with its own internal logic upon further questioning.

To give Dracula Untold some credit, it did try to be historically accurate — albeit in the most lazy sense of the word. The movie blatantly whitewashes the Turks, a historically Middle Eastern population, and attempts to explain away Vlad’s less-than-savory deeds as being a “result” of the Turks’ evil in an attempt to make him a sympathetic character while actively ignoring the actual historical context behind his actions. However, the history surrounding the real Vlad Tepes is murky at best, and conflictual and contradictory at worst. Dracula Untold attempts to paint Vlad as a tortured antihero; a man haunted by the actions of his past, who ultimately becomes a monster in the name of saving his people. The movie posits that Vlad is the way he is because of the Turks; that he would have never committed such cruelty if he were not forced to serve as a Turkish Janissary and commit acts of unimaginable evil. However, the actual historical context suggests otherwise.

The source I will be utilizing for the history behind the real Vlad Tepes is a post from the blog “A Historian Goes To The Movies,” written by A.E. Larsen, entitled “Dracula Untold: Don’t Go See This Movie." While the movie does get certain details correct — Vlad’s last name, Dracula, does mean son of the Dragon, his father, Vlad II, was inducted into the Order of the Dragon, and he did defy the Turks’ request for tribute, resulting in an all-out massacre — the similarities end there. Per Larsen, while Vlad and his brother, Radu, were given to the Turks, it was not to serve as Janissaries, but rather as “hostages for their father’s good behavior.” Furthermore, the movie omits the existence of Radu altogether. Vlad and Radu were “raised up as Muslims,” with the “latter [remaining] faithful to Islam, the former [rebelling],” leading to both brothers fighting, and resulting in Dracula “becoming a great tyrant.” Furthermore, the Turks and Vlad were not great enemies, at least not in the beginning. Dracula’s father, Vlad Dracul II, and his clan, known as the “House of Draculesti, had profited tremendously under Ottoman Rule. The Ottoman Turks fought and defeated John Hunyadi, an old enemy of Draculesti, in order to enthrone Vlad Dracul II.” Essentially, the Ottoman Turks wanted Dracula’s family to be in power—not the opposite, as Dracula Untold suggests. In regards to using the very real Mehmet II as the film’s central antagonist, this was a misguided move at best, as “at the time of the movie, Mehmet the II was in his mid-teens. He was a major figure in Turkish history, so killing him in the 1440s is sort of like killing Elizabeth I in the late 1550s not long after she [had] started her reign.” Why use Mehmet II as a villain, when the real story was undoubtedly more interesting? As mentioned previously, while Vlad rebelled, his brother remained loyal to the Turkish empire. In fact, when “Vlad Tepes started wreaking carnage across the Balkans, Mehmet II dispatched Radu to quell his brother’s blood-thirst.” While “the brother battled long,” Radu was ultimately victorious, leading to Vlad fleeing to Hungary, where he was then imprisoned on charges of treason. Which is to say, the filmmakers had options.

Furthermore, the film’s liberal usage of “the Turks” is lazy writing at best, and deeply problematic at worst. An article for The New Statesman by Elest Ali, titled “What the historical inaccuracies in ‘Dracula Untold’ tell us about the rise of Islamophobia” states, “to call an Ottoman a Turk is like calling a Roman an Italian. True, the Ottoman sultans were of Turkish origin. But the empire was much too big, much too ethnically diverse to be called Turkish.”

With all of that said, the core issue of the film is not the historical inaccuracies, the egregious whitewashing of (historically) people of color, nor the thin writing; it’s the apologism and attempting to pathologize the motivations of a ruthless, violent, dictator. In some respects, it feels uniquely depraved to make a big-budget blockbuster about how one of the most infamously cruel figures in history was actually doing it for his family, and actually felt very bad for his actions. As A.Ε. Larsen wrote, “it’s a bit perverse to make one of the most infamously cruel figures in history a romantic hero,” comparing it to a “rom-com about Pol Pot or Josef Stalin, in which our hero has a meet-cute with some dewy ingenue and then has to keep his genocidal schemes from her in order to win her love, with wacky consequences.” While none of Vlad Dracula’s victims are alive today, there is something more than mildly distasteful about making a movie that attempts to pathologize the motivations, and to an extent, make us sympathize with, a historical figure who had a reputation for “[killing] indiscriminately: Men, women, and children; Turks and Bulgarians; Muslims and sympathizing Christians."

While Dracula Untold is an indubitably flawed movie, its competent cast and well-choreographed, if not slightly hokey, action sequences buoy an otherwise lifeless script. With Luke Evans playing the titular Dracula, and a supporting cast including Dominic Cooper, Charles Dance, and Sarah Gadon, while the dialogue leaves much to be desired, it is at least delivered by believable, engaging acting that, in complete honesty, belongs in a much better movie. And some of the casting of the movie may have been questionable, the actors do have chemistry with each other, with the chemistry between Dracula (Evans) and Mirena (Gadon) being the crux of the movie. When Mirena offers her blood to Vlad in her dying breaths, Evans sells Vlad’s mixture of devastation and bloodlust. While the premise of Mirena’s death is goofy (she just falls off of an inexplicably tall building without handrails?) and her ultimate sacrifice being grounded in misogyny and the long-storied trope of “fridging” a female character in order to develop the (typically) male protagonist’s character arc, Gadon’s earnest performance as a concerned mother and wife attempting to protect her family from an ancient evil is one of the rare high points of the movie. In addition, Charles Dance’s performance as Caligula —who looks more like an undead Ozzy Osbourne than a centuries-old vampire — feels like an impression of Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula with a dash of B-movie charm in the best way possible. Dominic Cooper does an adequate job with the role that he is given. Mehmet’s character can be boiled down to one vaguely sinister mustache twirl, and the blatant whitewashing of his role must be noted — something that is not unfamiliar to the writers behind Dracula Untold, who also wrote the infamously white-washed Gods of Egypt. At a certain point, one has to wonder—is it a coincidence, or a pattern?

At its most fundamental level, Dracula Untold presents a fascinating case study in what happens when a historical figure is thrust into the spotlight of the modern, Hollywood-infused, action-adventure film. While the movie is not without its merit, as it does offer a campy, visually entertaining take on a classic monster origin story, the film ultimately fails because of its weak attempt to rewrite and whitewash history in order to make its central protagonist a sympathetic figure who audiences can root for. By blurring the lines between historical accuracy and narrative convenience, Dracula Untold fails to deliver on the promise of an engrossing, albeit fictionalized, exploration of Vlad the Impaler’s history, instead presenting a rose-colored depiction of a man who wasn’t just a genocidal dictator —- he’s also a wildly misunderstood Sad Boy who wanted to protect his family! As such, the film is left with a frustrating sense of unfulfilled potential, a symptom of a larger trend in modern Hollywood, specifically modern historical dramas, where the desire to create a “relatable” protagonist often outweighs the necessity for historical accuracy.