The Stax Report: Script Review of Dracula 2000

Wes Craven is
the producer.

Stax here with my reaction to the screenplay for Dracula 2000! This forthcoming vampire movie is produced by horror maestro Wes Craven (Scream) with Patrick Lussier (The Prophecy 3: The Ascent) directing. This taut, 98-page draft is by Joel Soisson (Highlander: Endgame) and it is dated March 15th, 2000. The film's impressive cast includes Christopher Plummer, Jonny Lee Miller, Omar Epps, Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager), Jennifer Esposito (Summer of Sam), Justine Waddell (Mansfield Park), Sean Patrick Thomas, Lochlyn Munroe, pop star Colleen "Vitamin C" Fitzpatrick, and Irish actor Gerard Butler (Mrs. Brown) as Count Dracula. The movie began filming June 26th on location in Toronto and New Orleans. Dimension Films will release it on December 22nd, 2000. The film is also referred to as either Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000 or as Wes Craven's Dracula 2000.

Dracula 2000 brings the undead count stateside where he wreaks havoc on New Orleans at the dawn of the new millennium. This script also creates a new origin for Dracula that differs greatly from both the Bram Stoker novel and the popular 1992 film adaptation directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola's movie drew much of its backstory from the history of Vlad the Impaler, the real-life figure who served as the inspiration for the Dracula legend. The origin story presented in Dracula 2000, however, bears a closer similarity to the idea behind Barry Sadler's Casca novels than it does to either Stoker's book or to Vlad the Impaler. If you've read Sadler's books then you may understand what I'm hinting at with my comparison to Casca; if you haven't then I've not spoiled anything for you. Overall, I liked this new origin for Dracula except that it didn't adequately explain how he (physically) became a vampire. It does, however, provide rational explanations for Dracula's susceptibility to both crucifixes and silver.

Jonny Lee Miller

A few characters from Bram Stoker's novel are re-invented here, with modern incarnations of Abraham Van Helsing/Matthew Van Helsing (both Plummer, I presume, since Abraham's just a cameo) and Lucy "Westerman" (Vitamin C). Mary, the daughter of the ailing Matthew Van Helsing, recalled Mina Harker to a degree since she serves as both the female lead as well as the Count's romantic objective. But, overall, this script was more of a whitebread remake of Blade than an updating of Stoker's novel.

Dracula 2000 opens with a brief glimpse at Dracula's new origin but unless you know your Judeo-Christian history, Dracula's true identity will remain a mystery until the story's climax. This opening sequence is followed by a brief encounter in the 19th century between Abraham Van Helsing and Dracula, where Van Helsing captures the count and conceals his remains deep within Carfax Abbey. The story then jumps to the present day. Carfax Abbey is now inside a highly secure office building owned by Abraham Van Helsing's great-grandson Matthew (Plummer), who is ailing from a mysterious illness. Matthew's heir apparent in the vampire hunting trade is young Simon Sheppard (Miller), whose day job involves the restoration and cataloguing of antique weaponry. After a gang of thieves, led by the vicious Marcus (Epps?) and the alluring Solina (Esposito), botch their attempt to steal Dracula's remains from Carfax Abbey, the undead count escapes to New Orleans. That is where Mary Van Helsing (Waddell), Matthew's enigamtic, estranged daughter, currently resides.

Christopher
Plummer

Mary has forsaken "the family business" in favor of working at the Virgin Megastore with her best friend Lucy (Vitamin C); there are a few good cracks made about the store's name and its obvious appeal to the seductive Count. Against her wishes, Mary is eventually drawn into her father's war with Dracula when Simon arrives in New Orleans. Simon must hunt down and destroy the escaped Count, a duty that brings him into conflict with Marcus' gang. Minor characters in New Orleans include ambitious TV reporter Valerie Bleth (Ryan) and local cop Perris Gautreaux. This draft's last act was a series of chases and clashes between Simon, Mary, Dracula, and the gang of thieves. The script ended with an all-too-obvious set-up for a sequel.

Overall, I found Dracula 2000 to be a decent but formulaic entry in the vampire film genre. The script left me feeling rather ambivalent. I did not dislike it but I wasn't bowled over, either. As I sat down to read it, I must admit that I expected it to be nothing more than a cheesy B-movie. To my surprise, though, that was not really the case. The script took itself quite seriously. Unfortunately, I just never knew enough about the characters to truly care for them and the story itself followed all the requisite beats of the vampire movie narrative. Although my copy was missing a few pages from the latter part of Act Two, I was still able to follow and understand the plot line. That tells you something about a script if you can miss what is essentially a few minutes of screen time and still figure out what happened; are those missing moments really that necessary then?

Like Blade, the film this story most closely resembles, this is a horror flick targeted for the youth demographic that has sketchy characters inhabiting a skimpy story full of gore and mayhem. The story is basically "kill the vampire"; actually, that is the plot to every vampire movie so you can understand why I found Dracula 2000 overly familiar. The fate of certain characters was never in doubt and this story ended just as I'd expected it would. Like Blade, there are a couple of characters torn between their vampirism and their humanity. Marcus' gang reminded me of the bad-asses that Deacon Frost surrounded himself with. And with his array of vampire-killing weaponry, Simon came across as an Anglo-Saxon version of Wesley Snipes' character. I can see why Jonny Lee Miller agreed to do this movie since he gets to play with all the cool toys.


The cast includes Omar Epps, Lochlyn Munroe, & Sean Patrick Thomas.

This draft was chock full of characters nearly indistinguishable from those in any other given vampire film. There were compelling back stories set-up for the story's main troika of characters (Dracula, Matthew Van Helsing, and Mary) but they were never fully explored. Mary spent a large amount of time reacting to odd hallucinations rather than performing any action of much consequence. This script, especially in its latter half, revolved mainly around Mary but I just didn't know or care enough about her for the story to pull me in the way that it should have.

I find it hard to say a lot about Dracula 2000, or to even to develop much of an opinion on it, since there just wasn't all that much to it. It's a "kill the vampire" movie, pure and simple, and one that I've seen several times already. Reading this script was akin to watching a re-run on cable; I was entertained but also mildly disinterested. The story itself was briskly executed, enlivened most by Dracula's diatribes against God (and the revelation of the count's real identity) during the homestretch. These were the moments when the story actually came alive but, because Dracula was such a supporting character, these moments were few and far between.


*The babes of Dracula 2000: Justine Waddell, Jeri Ryan, & Jennifer Esposito.*

On a positive note, the dialogue was better than I expected with Mr. Soisson using a "less is more" approach. The setting of New Orleans at the height of Mardi Gras, replete with macabre imagery and decadent celebrations, should also provide the filmmakers with some interesting visuals. But this Louisiana setting only reminded me of Anne Rice's well-known Vampire Lestat stories. Fortunately, this script was a far less excruciating read than the screenplay adaptation of Rice's Queen of the Damned. Still, both of these vampire-themed scripts suffered from the same problems: an overabundance of supporting characters and a lack of development in the main protagonists.

No offense is meant here to Mr. Lussier but I wish that Wes Craven was directing this movie rather than just producing it. I find the films that he produces (like Wes Craven's Wishmaster or Wes Craven's Mind Ripper) are often inferior to his directing efforts (Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street). While the able cast of Dracula 2000 will surely class things up, they can't conceal a routine story with transparent characters. Still, even though I had no desire for or real interest in enduring yet another take on the Dracula legend, I found this script somewhat entertaining in a perfunctory sort of way. If you appreciate vampire flicks then you'll probably enjoy Dracula 2000 for what it is, otherwise you'll likely consider this a somewhat forgettable genre romp. - STAX
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