Vlad

First of all, "Vlad" is a different kind vampire movie. It has almost nothing in common with the typical vampire movie and moves further in the Gothic fantasy genre, horror-fantasy would be a better term. Far away from typical clichés of the genre, this movie presents us a twist in the well known history of Count Dracula as it removes any link to Bram Stoker's novel and focuses on the myths that inspired Stoker's novel. This movie is a tale of Romanian vampires.

The plot is a bit confusing, but at its core, it is about four graduated students who are selected by a Rumanian organization that will fund their research for their final thesis as their projects deal with Rumanian folklore and/or Vlad Tepes, the legendary ruler of Valachia who inspired Stoker to write the famous novel. The organization, lead by Radescu (Brad Douriff), is in fact a facade for an ancient order created by Tepes centuries ago, and their purposes will reveal when one of the students, Linsey (Monica Davidescu), reveals her secret: Her family had stolen a medallion from Vlad's grave.

The secret powers of the medallion will create chaos as the members of the order try to find it, for different purposes everyone, and the students are in the middle of the struggle aided by Adrian (Billy Zane), a loyal agent of Radescu who tries to avoid the rebirth of Vlad.

Now, the plot is for once very clever and quite interesting. The writers really did a great research when they wrote the story as it includes pieces of real history, Romanian folklore and Vlad Tepes' biography. Of course, spiced with fantasy and horror elements. Nevertheless, this is also its big problem, the movie tries to accomplish many tasks and this creates a confusing script. Certainly, a bigger budget would have resulted in a longer movie, and a longer movie would have fixed the confusion.

Depsite that huge problem, the movie works at its level, with an incredibly looking visuals, thanks to the beautiful Romanian locations and the amazing camera-work. It's indeed surprising how much they could make with so small budget.

Sadly, the budget hurts the SFX and they look as if they came from a cheap TV series. This indeed decreases a work of good quality, but fortunately, they focus on acting and not in SFX, so it is not that notorious.

The acting is very good, and the young actors show promise. While some of the characters were not very developed, the actors did a good job with the little they had and the result is pretty good. Again, a bit more of care in the script would have resulted in outstanding performances, but yet, the actors carry the film with grace.

Last but not least, the most remarkable feature of this movie is without a doubt the music. It is an outstanding work and it is a shame that the movie had not been more known, because the music is really outstanding. Few times a b-movie has a score this good and the movie really makes the most of it.

While probably this movie is not Oscar material, it is certainly among the best vampire movies of this decade. Or at least, among the most original. A great fantasy movie. 6.5/10

A lot of people in the comments are giving this movie more stars than it deserves for ideas, or a different approach to the Dracula mythos than the usual vampire schlock. And in fact the makers of this film reached similar points to the novel "The Historian" from different paths. It is obvious from their dates of publication that both researched the topic heavily but neither influenced the other.

Anyway, perhaps it started out with a stronger script and got destroyed in editing, but the mess that we're left with at the end is pretty bad. Unforgivably bad plot movement, TV-movie cinematography and terrible editing whack this film in the end. You might enjoy parts of it, but the end result is a confused mess. There are good performances - by the entire cast, mind you - and lovely, appropriate locations. Certainly better than the abysmal 2005 "Way of the Vampire", but unfortunately the shortcomings outweigh the positives here.

I read a couple of the other reviews of this movie and didn't think that most of them were fair. I really think this was just an average movie, not a good or bad movie, just average.

I watch a lot of movies and love anything about vampires, but this movie didn't really do it for me. There was a lot of information about Vlad, but there wasn't a whole lot of info about vampires. Without giving anything away, I'll just say that the causes are Vlad's vampirism were nothing you haven't heard before if you've seen more than one vampire movie. With all the build up about Vlad, I was hoping for a more original plot. However, I don't think that because the movie failed to be original that it should count against it, I just think it shouldn't be praised for it either.

Besides the plot, the movies did have a pretty good production value. I'd say that it was a bit better than a made-for-TV movie but obviously not a big budget film. Just because it's an independent movie doesn't mean that its great. Independent companies put out plenty of bad movies, but this falls somewhere in-between.

I wouldn't say this movie is worth watching, but I don't regret watching it either.

This movie kept my attention, and kept it till the end. The actors all did a solid job of making their parts live. Brad Dourif and Billy Zane gave the film class and credibility. Kam Heskin is a hottie, and carried her part well. Francesco Quinn makes your skin crawl in this horror genre tale, admirably making the role of Vlad the Impaler come to life and chilling you down to your socks! (He looks a lot like his dad Anthony Quinn in some of the scenes) The Romanian actress (whom I've never seen before) did a great job of looking terrified & sexy. I wonder if she speaks any English? If not, she did a great job of handling the wordy role. The musical score really punches up the terror in the scary scenes, and sounds like a score from a Hollywood major film. This movie was filmed on location in Romania, with the major horror parts actually filmed in the Carpathians at Vlad's real castle. The Dracula character takes on a new & completely different direction, which in no way mimics former Dracula movies. I enjoyed this one....

In Romania, four students (two Americans – Jeff Meyer (Paul Popowich) and his sister Alexa (Kam Heskin); one British – Justin (Nicholas Iron); and one Romanian – Linsey (Monica Davidescu)) are selected by Radescu (Brad Dourif), the dean of a local university, and his assistant Adrian (Billy Zane) for a research about the life of the prince Vlad (Francesco Quinn). Linsey has a powerful necklace that belonged to Vlad, which was stolen many years ago by a former relative of her from the grave of Vlad. She intends to return it to the tomb. Meanwhile, a society that worships Vlad wants to retrieve the necklace. While in their way to the castle of Vlad, the group meets Ilona (Iva Hasperger), a woman from the Middle Ages, who was brought to the present days by the power of the necklace. Later they fight against the evil Vlad. Although having wonderful locations, photography and soundtrack and a cast with beautiful women, this movie does not work well, having a very confused story. With some improvements in the screenplay, it would be a good movie. The director and writer could at least spare the viewers from such a corny end. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): `Vlad – O Cavaleiro das Trevas' (`Vlad – The Knight of the Darkness')