I watched ‘Dracula (2020)’ so You Don’t Have to
May 13, 2022 | Dara Marie | @thornfield_laneFrom how much I’ve discussed Dracula on here, you’d think it was my favorite novel. It’s not, but the world seems obsessed with ruining this story, so here we are again, folks, with a review of a questionable adaptation.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula excited, horrified, and revolutionized upon its 1897 release and continues to do so in modern times. With such a classic story, it’s bound to be adapted countless times. One of the most recent ones was a 2020 three-episode miniseries on Netflix.
I heard about the series around the time I read the book and was excited to dive in. I love miniseries because I think they’re the perfect medium: longer than a movie but not as long as a full show… When I tell you I barely got through the first episode…
I’m just sitting here, trying to enjoy it, when not even five minutes in, Jonathan Harker is being integrated by a nun about whether he ever “had sexual intercourse with Count Dracula.”... Excuse me? I feel like that alone tells you so much about this adaptation.
Beyond that alarming dialogue, I appreciated the episode’s first half. Plotwise, that is. Readers will recognize the story of English solicitor Jonathon Harker traveling to Castle Dracula in Transylvania to settle a few business matters with an old Count who is buying real estate in London. He soon realizes his host is more than human and becomes trapped. He narrowly escapes and finds refuge at a convent which brings him back from the brink of death.
In the series, this part is told as if being recounted by Jonathon to the nuns. It cuts back and forth between vignettes of him sitting with two nuns who are asking questions.
I had few complaints up until this point. The set design, music, and editing were compelling. The script had a modern pace but stuck, for the most part, fairly close to the original. They had a lot of wordplay I was able to appreciate. Because Dracula is such a well-known name, we know long before any of the characters that they’re dealing with a vampire. So when Jonathon cautiously asks if there ‘is anyone else living in the castle’ and Dracula assures, ‘No, Jonathan; there is no one living here,” –I had to laugh.
They indirectly call out the original for being vague and worked to fill in gaps as well as take liberties. They played around with the idea of Dracula being like ‘a child’ and ‘experimenting’ and how he’s different from other vampires.
My only complaint in the first half was how plastic the CGI was. It was just so fake. And obviously, CGI is by nature fake but there are certain ways to do it that blend seamlessly. There’s a sequence of Jonathon stumbling across a hoard of undead bodies in the castle: the creatures looked like they were wearing 9.99$ Halloween masks from Party City.
So, it had done fairly well: it was sinister, inventive, and mostly accurate. And then it hit the fifty-minute mark and decided: ‘to hell with logic!’
The only way to make you understand is to explain the plot of the first episode’s remaining thirty-nine minutes:
Dracula takes a dying Jonathon up to a tower overlook after the Englishman has figured out everything about what’s going on in the castle and proceeds to snap his neck. Since Dracula’s been slowly draining his blood over the last few weeks, Jonathon is turned into an undead and comes back to life. He manages to escape when the sunlight reflects off his crucifix and momentarily blinds Dracula.
At the convent, now caught up to the present, we learn one of the nuns who was questioning Jonathon was actually his fiance, Mina. They have a tender reunion until a bat flies through the window and claws her eye, drawing blood. A bat colony swarms the convent while the sky rumbles with a storm. The leading nun goes to the front gates with the mother superior to find a wolf stalking back and forth. The nun taunts the wolf until it starts convulsing, the flesh rips open, and Dracula emerges from the skin, naked and covered in blood. (This sequence was 20% cheesy, 80% disturbing. Also, he remains naked for most of the remaining episode. Shadows, gates, and skillful angles obscure his genitalia yet we see his naked butt multiple times. Why? Who reads Dracula and thinks, you know what this needs? A vampire’s bloody butt in full view).
The leading nun then rings a bell and at least a dozen other nuns come out of nowhere, get into formation, and whip out sharpened stakes they brandish as if they’re ready to begin a synchronized march. (I am dead serious. I’m not making this up. This is the type of stupid idea I’d never let see the light of day if I ever wrote it).
Dracula and the nun go on to have a long conversation where she asks him various questions about his limitations as a vampire. To test the theory that they can’t enter a place without first being invited in, she slices her palm and throws the blood on him while informing him he’s not allowed in. (And then seems shocked when it actually works?).
Meanwhile, upstairs Jonathon is struggling to keep it together as his new vampire instincts are tempting him to prey on the bleeding Mina. He lunges at her but she narrowly manages to escape and close the door on him. (Ok, this part was genuinely horrifying. The makeup is phenomenal, along with the music and acting: it made my skin crawl. It disappoints me when there are good parts in this show because the rest is so awful). Horrified by what he almost did, he takes a stake and rams it into his heart.
Back outside, the nun continues interrogating Dracula. Satisfied in what she’s learned and that he cannot enter, she turns to leave. In this verison, Dracula ‘absorbs’ people’s knowledge when he drinks their blood, so licking up the nun’s blood, he shouts that he knows who she is. (Have you guessed it yet?)
Van Helsing!!!
Yup, that’s right. Van Helsing is a woman. Not only that, a nun. This show was losing points for me fast but this made it plummet. For multiple reasons.
First of all, the whole Dracula–Van Helsing interaction was so sexually tense. The way they bantered and even carried themselves around each other felt like at any moment, they would grab the other and stick their tongue down their throat. Obviously, vampires have a reputation for being seductive and sexy, but who asked for a Dracula–Van Helsing match-up? If it was you, please reach out to me; I would like to pay for you to see a good therapist. I was uncomfortable most of the time and even more off-put when I learned who the nun was.
No. No. Absolutely not.
shouldn’t push it to the point your character is literally saying that she’s “your every nightmare at once; an educated woman in a crucible.” Can you hear that? It’s feminists around the globe rising up in a collective groan. A woman would not have achieved that much education in this time period, especially not in science. In adaptations, you’re allowed to change a character a little; this Van Helsing doesn't even begin to resemble the novel’s.
This revelation made me want to turn it off, but I plowed through because the episode hadn’t finished butchering my expectations yet.
The nuns all go back inside to a sermon from the mother superior. When suddenly, who shows up? Oh, just Dracula. How, you might ask? Jonathan wasn’t actually dead after the whole stabbing because vampires can’t commit suicide. Dracula scales the wall and tells Jonathon he’ll kill him if he lets him inside. So, now inside Dracula goes on an absolute rampage slicing nuns' heads off with a sword (don’t ask where he got it; I have no idea) before ordering a pack of wolves to come in and slaughter them all.
Van Helsing and Mina run downstairs to Van Helsing’s study and create a sacred line the Count can’t cross. Jonathan comes down a minute later and Mina offers her hand to him, allowing him to cross the ‘do not cross’ line. As soon as he’s stepped over, Mina asks why his eyes are no longer blue.
Plot twist: it was Dracula using Jonathon’s skin.
And, thank heavens, the episode is finally over. The first one, I might point out. They managed to butcher a classic novel in ninety minutes then had the audacity to go and have two more episodes.
I was so hesitant to watch the second episode that the first time I watched it, I didn’t even bother. It wasn’t until months later when I reread the book I decided to rewatch it, knowing I would go on to write about it here.
Despite my disgust by the first episode’s second half, the second episode pleasantly surprised me.
In the book, there is a section told through ship logs. Dracula has smuggled himself on the ship and is slowly picking off the crew but no one knows that except the audience. This episode is set on that ship and we see exactly that: the treacherous voyage with Dracula being Dracula.
I felt it was very compelling. Beyond some strange editing and some blood that looked obviously fake, I really enjoyed it. I got invested in the plot and was excited when potential plot twists were teased. It’s a side of the story we haven’t seen before but is rooted in the original: perfect adaptation material.
It had two main downfalls. The first was the plotline where Van Helsing is still alive and on the boat with Dracula as his prisoner. She’s trapped in a subconscious chess game with the Count where they continue their weird sexual tension as he explains the voyage to her. It didn’t make much sense.
But, once she wakes up, it returns to mostly notable plots with her and the now dwindled crew taking down Dracula; they manage to get him in a coffin and send him into the sea.
At this point, I was almost ready to admit I’d judged it too harshly.
Then the last five minutes happened.
And here we come to the show’s overall downfall.
Dracula has been adapted so many times: we all know the story. So to justify another adaptation, one would have to be unique. This series is trying far too hard to make it different by making it modern. Quite literally. They go as far as to set the last episode in modern times.
In the last five minutes of episode two, we see Dracula break his way out of his coffin and make it to shore. Immediately, helicopter spotlights are turned on him while police surround the area. Van Helsing rolls up looking smug and says, “Welcome to England, Count Dracula. What kept you?”
Once again, I reached the end of an episode and considered not continuing. They were so close–so close!–to redemption. And then let it slip through their fingers and shatter all over their feet.
Episode three is a million times worse than episode one. It’s set in modern times with Van Helsing’s great-great-niece tracking down Dracula.
As I did with the first episode, I’ll give you a brief rundown of the plot:
Dracula is arrested and put under watch in a top-secret science investigative unit run by Dr. Van Helsing the younger. But he gets a hold of an iPad, hires a lawyer, and gets out. He turns Lucy Westenra, who’s obsessed with being pretty, into one of his brides but her body is cremated by her family so she looks like a burnt marshmallow and cries that she has to be ugly for all eternity. Dr. Van Helsing is dying of cancer so her blood is poisonous to him. After finally tracking him down, they have another weird, sexually tense interrogation. He admits he’s afraid to die but then sucks her blood, killing himself. It ends by showing a shot of him lying on top of her, and then a shot of them in supposedly the afterlife in bed together…
You might notice my synopsis for this episode was significantly shorter than my one for the first. That is because I couldn’t bring myself to rewatch clips of it in order to be more specific. The first episode becomes cringey; the third is just painful. I remember saying to myself, “What the actual f**k?!” when I finished it.
Someone at Netflix needs to be fired. ASAP.
This series is everything wrong with book adaptations. This is what book nerds fear. My hatred for it, if you cannot tell, is unmatched. This is hands down the worst adaptation I’ve ever seen.
I have only met one other person who has seen this series and they claimed to have enjoyed it. I no longer trust their judgment. If Netflix gets their hands on Frankenstein, I am going to form a riot.
Have you seen Dracula (2020)? What did you think? What’s the worst adaptation you’ve seen? I'd love to hear from you! You can connect with me through thornfield.lane@gmail.com or on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter: @thornfield_lane.
