‘Game of Thrones’: so much to answer for. With its mittel-European medieval setting, royal hostage-taking and epic mountain landscapes, this atrocious effects-heavy actioner has far more in common with the work of George RR Martin than Bram Stoker’s classic horror story. It even lifts a large chunk of its cast from the hugely popular HBO TV series.
In twelfth-century Romania, Prince Vlad (Luke Evans) has set aside his impaling stick and settled down to a life of peace and plenty with his wife and son. But when the Turkish army under the control of Sultan Mehmet (Dominic Cooper in ropey cod-Arabic brown-face) come making war, Vlad turns to an ancient power, Charles Dance’s crumbling undead shut-in, to give him the strength to fight back.
This is a disaster from start to finish: the action sequences are blurry and impossible to follow, the dialogue is knuckle-bitingly awful and the rewriting of vampire lore is tacky and nonsensical. Drab, daft and mind-numbingly dull, this Dracula is strictly for the suckers.