certain Mr. Van Helsing (Plummer), a London antiques dealer, keeps his most valuable treasures in a vault beneath his shop. What he doesn't know is that his secretary, Selena (Esposito), belongs to a gang of thieves out to nick his stash. What they don't know is that it isn't gold or jewels but the entombed remains of Dracula--not just a character in a novel but a real-life monster. The moldering corpse was locked in a steel casket and sealed with crosses by Van Helsing's vampire-hunter grandfather a century ago.
The thieves escape with the casket, load it onto a private jet and take off across the Atlantic, headed for New Orleans. Before they land, however, the Prince of Darkness transforms them all into blood-sucking vampires, just in time for Mardi Gras.
The Big Easy is also where Van Helsing's daughter, Mary (Waddell), lives with roommate Lucy (Fitzpatrick). Mary dreams about a tall, dark stranger intent on seducing her--or worse. Why? Because she's her father's daughter. Seems Van Helsing is not only the grandson of Dracula's archenemy; he is in fact his own grandfather, having stayed alive the last hundred years to protect the world from evil. How? By shooting up just enough of Dracula's blood ("filtered through leeches") to keep himself going.
Soon Van Helsing and an assistant arrive in New Orleans, with weapons that include a nifty switchblade crucifix. Before the battle is over, Lucy, Selena and a TV reporter (Geri Ryan, from TV's Voyager) have joined the undead. Besides the requisite neck-bitings and decapitations, there is an unexpected twist about Dracula's origin that may stir up controversy among die-hard horror fans.
Dracula for the MTV generation
Since Universal's 1931 Dracula, there have been other modern updates (i.e. Dracula A.D. 1972). This one, unfortunately, is simply not scary--a cardinal sin for any horror movie, and one shared by the slick, expensive remakes of the original starring Frank Langella, Louis Jourdan and Gary Oldman (though not the Hammer films with Chistopher Lee).
With its smash-cut, music-video style, dramatic values don't count for much. The editing serves the special effects, with human drama an afterthought. Instead of dialogue we get cute one-liners. Plummer, still carrying a Trapp Family accent, manages to introduce one curious pronunciation: "Dracoolia", a variant that never occurred to Peter Cushing, Laurence Olivier or Anthony Hopkins.
The rest of the casting is according to type. Esposito, a tanned American, looks like Daisy Fuentes. Waddell looks like Natasha Gregson Wagner but with a stiffer upper lip. Butler looks like a veiny Neil Gaiman. "He's better than chocolate!" announces a smitten-and-bitten Lucy. He must be. When he sucks women's necks, their passion reaches such heights that they actually levitate.
The unexpected revelation, when it comes, attempts to explain why Dracula is horrified by silver, and why instead of dying he instead turned into a cross between Jim Morrison and Wolverine. A more obvious twist is that we also learn that Mary is indeed her father's daughter, having inherited Van Helsing's immunity. At the fade-out she takes over the family business, vowing to guard Drac's remains forever--or at least until the sequels run dry.
