SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

jacobjohntaylor1 This is ballet based on Dracula. Dracula is one of the my favourite horror stories. So I really enjoy this movie. It is very scary. It has great story line. I has great dancing. It has great music. If you what to see a great vampire movie. This is the one to see. Wei-Qiang Zhang is great has Dracula. He is a great actor. He is very scary. David Moroni is a great actor. 7 is under rating it. It is a 9. This movie very different. This movie is must see. It is based on one of the best horror books ever. And it is one of the best horror movies ever. Johnny A Wright is a great actor. This is one the best remakes of all time. 9 out of 10. This is a great film.

tedg I am completely revising my must see list after watching this. I know only one other of Maddin's projects, his "Saddest Music in the World" of the next year. I rated that in my category of films you must see. The rules of that list are that no more than two films per year, nor no more than two per filmmaker can be on it. This almost bumped "Talk to Her" off that list. It may yet. Let me advise you now that this is powerful and important stuff, the only successful marriage I know of literature, dance and film. In fact I know few that successfully integrate any two, much less masterpieces in each medium.The story itself is greatly enriched: all the most terrifying horror is beautiful, and this is: an arc of desire across your life for that hour and a half. Where the original was only about sex, this is written larger to race, money, power and all in an erotic context that transcends sex. You'll notice when seeing this that it is more true to the book than any other filmed version.Now just think for a moment about this: Dracula has been filmed by Murnau, Browning, Warhol, Herzog, Franco, Coppola and herds of lesser lights. No where has the scope been this broad and sharp.(The device of the diary has been changed from the detective's to the virgin's, a master concept that indicates the deep thought that went into this. Exposure to that diary makes the girlfriend sex-crazed, for instance, as if the art itself were the infected blood.)The dance. The choreographer has put together something that is remarkable, even seen merely as a ballet. It uses Mahler's music, by the way. That music is usually so overtly ripe it smells of selfish world conquest. It says something that here it seems merely supportive, that what you see on the screen is bigger.So the choreography affects powerfully but what matters is the cinematic rendition. This is far more evocative as filmed ballet than a live performance can ever be, because we are allowed to have our eyes dance as participants. When a character's eyes flutter and question, ours do too. When the dance suggests a motion, it is us that completes it or gives it a resting place. The integration of choreography and cinematography is the best I have ever had in my life: beyond the sheer energy of "Red Shoes" to intimacy.But it is the other cinematic qualities that make this unique. Dracula is a powerful story only because it evokes notions of the past that have power to awaken and live in our souls. Those notions are like the vampire and carried by him in the story. Once we touch them -- have sex with them, we are infected, transformed.How to convey that cinematically? Why by evoking old film techniques as the story did literary ones. (Today that evocation by hacks is inaptly called "gothic.") So we have a silent film. Actually a postmodern comment on a silent black and white film. Lots of reminders of the camera in cropping and Vaselined lenses. Occasional tinting (blood and lucre), overtly theatrical sound effects, wobbling when we have to move quickly (or die).The gauzy camera lens is made three dimensional with fog that extends the blur as the camera motion is also made three dimensional by the moving crowd. The whole thing has a phrasing and rhythm that is so well integrated among the dance, light, camera, story and music it is as if the things coevolved from the big bang.Whoever did the art design deserves a reward. The sets are organic and in the last half in the lair, overtly vaginal -- so overtly it shocks. It must have been drawn at the same time as the choreography.There's sex and beauty and seduction here. Be seduced my friends. Succumb. Art requires seduction and in the process some infection of urges. It is all about the dance -- Succumb, dance, die.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Coventry Quite unique and very stylish interpretation of the legendary Bram Stoker-tale, shot by one of the most gifted (yet regretfully underrated) fantasy-directors of all time; Guy Maddin. There isn't much to say about storyline, as the film loyally tells the myth of Dracula as we all know it. The originality here is Mark Godden's ballet adaptation of Stoker's novel and the fact Maddin films it as a very stylish, neo-silent play with a very limited amount of sets and a Chinese actor in the role of Dracula. Of course, several sequences have been removed in this film (like Harker's journey through Transylvania) and others have been modified (it is in fact Lucy who's the main character, not Mina) but what Maddin adds truly makes up for this. This is a very beautiful film to look at, with a staggering use of color-shades and musical guidance. I never ever thought I would say this but the ballet performances are mesmerizing and – if ballet always looks like this – I urgently have to attend more recitals! With his third best film to date (after "Tales from the Gimli Hospital" and "The Saddest Music in the World"), Guy Maddin brings wonderful homage to classic and silent cinema. It's really encouraging to see that films like this are still being made in this day and age. Highly recommended!

kintopf432 Despite the extreme, extreme familiarity of the source material and the stuffy associations of the ballet form, Guy Maddin's 'Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary' emerges not only as one of the best 'Dracula' movies ever, but also as one of the best films about the Victorian Era (ranking with 'The Elephant Man' and 'Topsy-Turvy'). Maddin achieves the first feat with his insight into Stoker's novel (it's exciting to see somebody touch on the misogyny and xenophobia for once), and the second through a fascinating and completely appropriate aesthetic synthesis. Combining a 19th-century novel with a 19th-century pop art form, and setting it to 19th-century music (Mahler's from the wrong country, but so what), is a good beginning, but what makes it work, of course, is shooting it all in a mock-19th-century style. OK, so the silent horror films we think of date from a little later; still, Maddin does what he can to give the film a primitive, experimental, moving-daguerreotype effect, and the result feels like an actual window to the past, even if it's all just an artificial aesthetic construct. If this all sounds a bit self-conscious and over-the-top, it sort of is, but viewers will almost certainly be surprised at how unpretentious the effect actually is. The more explicitly balletic moments occasionally slow things down a bit for non-fans, but Maddin wisely keeps the running time at 75 minutes, and this helps the film retain a surprising accessibility. Not for all tastes, of course, but worth the effort for just about anyone. 8.5 out of 10.