TheRetroCritic

And so a franchise that died soon after it started continues and ends with an instalment that may not be the worst of the bunch but which is still hardly impressive or necessary. Luckily, it learns a little bit from Dracula II: Ascension 's mistakes. For one thing, the main characters this time are Jason Scott Lee's badass priest and Jason London's jokey sidekick. That's a good thing. We follow these two as they fight off vampires on stilts and say unintentionally hilarious things like "You don't bless babies.". It's not great art but it just about kinda works. At least the film is trying to be somewhat fun and entertaining, which is more than I can say about its predecessor. Unfortunately, way too much time is spent waiting for the vampires to come out. So many scenes take place during the day when all our heroes can really do is spout out exposition and prepare for whatever's going to take place later. It's not terribly interesting and j

Well that franchise died quickly... Now I'm not going to pretend that Dracula 2000 was a masterpiece that reinvented the entire horror genre but it was certainly much better than this! The first film was pretty trashy but it had its charm: you had Christopher Plummer as Van Helsing, Dracula checking out Virgin Megastores, it was ludicrous but kinda fun. Dracula II: Ascension is not so much ludicrous, although it most definitely is, as it is altogether poorly conceived. The main problem with this sequel, for me, was the plot. Why would you make a Dracula film called Dracula II and have the iconic vampire strapped helpless by a net for 99% of it?! Really, the film should have just been about Jason Scott Lee's badass priest going around the world killing vampires, and you can tell it wanted to be. Unfortunately, it had to also somehow link itself with the first film AND prompt a sequel so what we're left with is a film which is nothing more than a bridge between somet