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 DRACULA
II: ASCENSION
PLOT
When a coroner and her friend stumble onto a dead vampire and
receive a strange phone call, offering them 30 million dollars for
the body, they and three other friends decide to do some examining
of their own. Things go surprisingly wrong and take a turn for the
worse as Dracula gets resurrected. They chain him up and start
doing some experiments on him, with help from the man who offered
them the money in the first place. But it seems as if Dracula doesn't
plan on being chained up for much longer...
REVIEW
I kind of liked Dracula 2000, I thought it was hip and cool and I
can honestly say that it was the first vampire movie that I've ever
enjoyed. However, Dracula 2 is a sequel to that movie, even if it
doesn't have any connection at all to the first one, well it does
have some connection but there are no faces to be recognized from
the first one anyway. This was to my surprise even better than
the first one, even if it wasn't by much. This was original and
took vampire movies to new heights. This obviously didn't have
the budget that Dracula 2000 did, this was direct-to-video though
so I guess that would explain it, but still, the effects were
pretty lame and could've used some fixing up.
I was surprised to see how this movie brought out some rather
unknown faces while leaving Roy Scheider (Jaws movies) playing
a very small part as a priest for five minutes in the movie.
Patrick Lussier who also directed the box office movie Dracula
2000 and who is going to direct Dracula III sure knows how to
spend his money right. The directing is far from as good as the
first movie but considering the low budget, this looks incredibly
good and in my opinion this should be up there on the big screen
aswell... Though it does indeed have its flaws.
This is nothing like the ordinary Dracula movie. It has an original
story and some very talented, yet very unknown, actors. The third
sequel for Dracula 2000 had already been casted and I think that
the production had already started before this was finished. What
bugged me about this was that it seemed as if the makers of this
movie decided that they didn't have to have a very clever ending
since they were going to make a third one anyway. Still, this is
a good movie and probably excellent for the vampire movie fan, but
to tell you the truth, this is the best vampire movie I've ever
seen and still it only gets three stars... I guess you know what
my opinion on vampire movies is now.
GORE
Nothing too amazing, a lot of very fake looking decapitated heads,
was that the only effect they knew how to make, or...? We have
some bashed in face and some bloodsplatter but nothing impressive
at all. In fact, one gore scene was cool until it became ridiculous,
going against every rule from previous vampire movies.
SOUNDTRACK
Hmmmm, nope, I don't like it. There is nothing special about the
soundtrack and it feels cheap as they just use some background
music. At least Dracula 2000 had some cool rock tunes in there.
BOTTOM LINE
A killer vampire flick for the vampirefan, but average to me as I
generally don't like vampire movies very much. Still, I did like
this more than I thought that I would and I was very pleasantly
surprised. I think everyone should have a go with this one, well,
everyone who enjoyed Dracula 2000 anyway.
Review
By: AnthroFred
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