While the premise of “Dracula: A Love Tale” is interesting, you are not really made to care much for the characters or their motives, leaving the stakes of the film to hold little weight for the audience. 

The movie starts with Dracula going to war and asking God to protect his wife. But when she dies quickly after, he curses God who then makes him immortal. Dracula then spends the next 400 years looking for his wife who he believes will be reincarnated. 

There is a sequence at the beginning of the film that shows Dracula and his wife in love before she died, but it’s short-lived and doesn’t give you anything to really like the characters from. This lack of personality within the characters continues throughout the whole movie and makes it harder to connect to. 

A lot of the lore of Dracula and what he did within the past 400 years, the ways he grieved and looked for the reincarnation of his wife, is over explained. Most of it is just told straight to you when one of Dracula’s victims has the dying wish to hear his story. Dracula then literally pulls up a chair, sits down and tells him. While this is a good way of getting some of the important information we as a viewer should know, it tells a lot without pacing any of it out, giving you any time to try and figure things out for yourself, or ask any questions. It’s like a bucket of Dracula’s history just gets poured into your lap. Other small details are also later just told instead of shown. 

Some of the characters also seem very quick to change their minds about things they were so set on before, continuing the theme of the characters’ personalities not being well developed. An exception is Maria, who is more expressive and consistent throughout the film. There is also a plot line about Dracula making a perfume that can seduce all women, in hopes it will help bring his wife back to him. While this does demonstrate some of the lengths he went to in order to find his wife, this aspect just comes across as more silly than anything else. 

While the character building isn’t really there and things are over explained, the movie is still very pretty to look at. The overview shots are beautiful and the outfits throughout the different time periods Dracula lives through are detailed and impressive. The makeup used to age Dracula is also well done. There are a few small, funny moments, and a fight scene at the end with choreography that is extremely satisfying to watch. 

However, the end of the movie is a bit anti-climatic and kind of makes you wonder “what was all of that for?” All in all, “Dracula: A Love Tale” isn’t a bad watch, but it doesn’t do much to stand out.