Stefan Petzner

Dracula 2000
Movie poster for Dracula 2000
Directed by	Patrick Lussier
Written by	Joel Soisson
Produced by	Wes Craven
Starring	Gerard Butler Christopher Plummer Jonny Lee Miller Jennifer Esposito Justine Waddell
Cinematography	Peter Pau
Edited by	Peter Devaney Flanagan
Music by	Marco Beltrami
Distributed by	Dimension Films
Release dates	December 22, 2000
Running time	99 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$28,000,000 (estimated)

Dracula 2000 (also known as Dracula 2001 in some countries) is a 2000 horror film which attempts to transfer the story of Dracula into the setting of a modern teen horror film. The film offers a unique story for Dracula's origins not found in any other vampire movie. Promotionially titled Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000, the film is followed by two sequels, Dracula II Ascension and Dracula III Legacy.

Plot

The film opens in 1897, with Count Dracula's voyage to England on the Demeter and his arrival in London. The narrative then moves forward to present-day London, with a group of thieves infiltrating the antique shop Carfax Abbey. Penetrating into its innermost vault they expect to find a fortune in treasure. Instead they encounter a sealed coffin. Upon attempting to move the coffin, some of the treasure-hunting party are gruesomely killed by the vault's security system, leading the survivors to believe the coffin is the treasure they have come for. It is no surprise when the coffin is later revealed to contain the dormant body of Count Dracula. We learn that Carfax Abbey (also the name of Dracula's London residence in Bram Stoker's original novel) is owned and operated by Dracula's nemesis, Abraham Van Helsing, who, after trapping and subduing Dracula a century before, has been keeping himself alive with injections of the vampire's blood filtered through leeches until he can find a way to destroy Dracula forever.

While flying the coffin back to the United States one of the thieves manages to open the coffin, releasing Dracula. The count proceeds to feast on the blood of the thieves, one of whom happens to be flying the airplane, causing them to crash in the swamps of Louisiana. Surviving the crash, he heads to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Van Helsing's estranged daughter Mary and her best friend Lucy live. Meanwhile Van Helsing and his assistant Simon head to the U.S. to recapture Dracula.

The one significant twist this film brings to the Dracula legend is its explanation of his origin. In this film, Dracula is established to be Judas Iscariot, cursed to walk the earth as an immortal for his betrayal of Jesus, being denied admission to both Heaven and Hell. This explains some of the vampire's best-known weaknesses, primarily Christian iconography and silver, as Judas was paid in silver for betraying Christ to the authorities. Although Bram Stoker makes no reference to a vulnerability to silver in his novel, it is a part of some examples of European vampire folklore.

Cast

• Gerard Butler as Dracula
• Christopher Plummer as Matthew/Abraham Van Helsing
• Jonny Lee Miller as Simon Sheppard
• Justine Waddell as Mary Heller/Van Helsing
• Danny Masterson as Nightshade
• Jeri Ryan as Valerie Sharpe
• Colleen Fitzpatrick (aka Vitamin C) as Lucy Westerman
• Jennifer Esposito as Solina
• Lochlyn Munro as Eddie
• Sean Patrick Thomas as Trick
• Omar Epps as Marcus
• Tig Fong as Dax
• Tony Munch as Charlie
• Shane West as J.T.
• Tom Kane as The Newscaster

Production

The film was produced by Dimension Films and Neo Art & Logic. Veteran horror film director Wes Craven was executive producer and his long time editor, Patrick Lussier, directed the film. Joel Soisson is credited with the screenplay, with the story by Soisson and Lussier. However, the film went through numerous uncredited rewrites by Scott Derrickson & Paul Harris Boardman and Ehren Krueger. Wes Craven and Laeta Kalogridis also polished certain scenes during post production. The film was noteworthy in the year of its release for the highly accelerated schedule it was made under. Production commenced on June 21st, 2000 with an unfinished script. The film was released six months later on December 22nd 2000. Its executive producer, Wes Craven commented in Entertainment Weekly on how he felt the accelerated schedule had affected the making of the film. Principal photography finished at the beginning of September 2000 with additional photography commencing fin the last week of October 2000. The film continued to be rewritten throughout production and post-production with the final rewritten scenes being shot late in November 2000.

Reception

Dracula 2000 opened at #7 in its first week at the box office with $8.6 million. In its second week the film had a 56.5% drop-off, staying at #8. The film grossed $33 million domestically and $14 million in foreign countries making a total of $47 million worldwide, exceeding its $28 million budget. On its initial video release it grossed an additional $32 million in the US and Canada and is still making money worldwide. The movie received negative reviews. The site Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a "rotten" score of 15% and an average rating of 3.7/10, stating that Dracula 2000 "tries to offer a different spin on the origin of Dracula", but "Unfortunately, there's nothing here audiences haven't seen before". Metacritic.com rates the film 26 out of a 100 while its users give it 6.5 out of 10. In spite of its critical failure, Dracula 2000 was the 6th highest grossing film for Miramax/Dimension Films in 2000, exceeding the box office takes of such expensive Dimension Films releases like Reindeer Games and Impostor as well as the Miramax Film December opener for that year, All the Pretty Horses.

Soundtrack

Main article: Dracula 2000 Soundtrack

References to other versions

The movie has numerous references to both Dracula the novel and other movie versions:

• Van Helsing's business is located in Carfax Abbey, which was Dracula's English residence in the Bram Stoker novel.
• When the crashed plane is found by authorities, the dead pilot has been lashed to the yoke, in parallel to the captain of the ship Demeter, which brought Dracula to London, who was found dead and lashed to the ship's wheel.
• One of the doctors examining Solina is named Dr. Seward.
• Mary's housemate who is made a vampire by Dracula is called Lucy Westerman, in reference to Lucy Westenra, who undergoes a similar fate.
• On being offered a drink, Dracula quips "I don't drink ... coffee.", which is very similar to Bela Lugosi's line "I never drink ... wine" in Dracula (1931).
• The sexual relationship between Dracula and Mary is questioned, in the end, whether or not they were in love. This refers to Francis Ford Coppola's filmed version in 1992 where Dracula (Gary Oldman) is in fact in love with Mina Harker (Winona Ryder).
• Van Helsing declares that Dracula is neither myth "nor ravings of a mad Irish novelist" in contradiction to the 1994 movie Interview with the Vampire, in which the protagonist Louis describes Bram Stoker's book with words similar to that effect.
• During the Mardi Gras parade there is a giant mask of Bela Lugosi's version of Dracula.

External links

• Dracula 2000 at IMDb
• Dracula 2000 at AllMovie