Argento's Dracula (2012)
Remember what I said I would do if I met John Carpenter? Well, it looks like I'll have to have a second plate of tazing because I now want to verbal abuse Dario Argento. Though his earlier works of art are amazing, as seen on Day #1 with DEEP RED, his talents as a filmmaker rapidly dwindled once the 90's hit. He continued to plunge further and further past the bottom of the barrel, with this being his most recent and absolute worst film. Yet another loose adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel, ARGENTO'S DRACULA is nearly two hours of appalling creative decisions. For example, instead of transforming into just a bat and a wolf, Count Dracula here thinks its cooler to kill his prey as an owl, an annoying fruit fly, and a giant-sized praying mantis. I am not making any of that up. There's more crap to go through: Scenes set at night but shot on a very sunny day; shots of dogs that happy and heavily breathing, yet they are supposed to be evil wolves and supplied with a soundtrack of growls; dreadful acting all around, from Thomas Kretschmann and Asia Argento's incomprehensible mumbling to Unax Ugalde's wooden approach and bland dubbing; many side-stories that go absolutely nowhere and included solely for padding; CGI work ripped straight from a Playstation 1 video game; Claudio Simonetti's pathetic score that sounds like it belongs to a 50's sci-fi z-movie; Rugteur Hauer as the most senile and depressed Van Helsing ever, yet has the cheap power of one-hit-kill, etc. Argento churned out a film that even The Asylum would laugh at and reject upon its first frame. At least those guys aren't pretentious and know to throw some humor in when the budget and talent is less than zero.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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