10 Movies You Turned Off After The Opening Scene

Dracula Untold - retold, rebooted, reimagined, whatever. The clue is in the title; this movie definitely should have remained thus. Dracula movies are now in their double century, in terms of sheer numbers, there are sh*tloads of them. Some magnificent (Nosferatu, Bram Stoker's, Hammer's early offerings) some dead on arrival (Van Helsing, Dracula 2000) so to single this film out might seem a bit unfair?

Well, let's look at the evidence shall we? Up first, a LOTR style prologue, helpfully explaining the sweep of invading Turks west and the brave Transylvanian warriors, trained from childhood, looks like another 300 sequel we never asked for. Dracula himself is now the REAL Vlad The Impaler, and if there was one historical maniac that you really can't gloss over, it's Vlad. Now he's a noble prince, weary of war and only interested in the defence of his people. A good bloke all round.

The opening ten minutes attempt to give us context, instead we get a mess of characters thrown in with no development save for the task of undoing Dracula's existing mythology. The lame plot device (they meet a vampire in a local cave) that transforms Vlad isn't enough to carry the weight of the next two painful hours.

The worst crime though is simply attempting to take an alluring, dangerous and tragic classic horror icon and turn him into a sexy Game Of Thrones type, which you have to admit sounds vaguely appealing... until you watch the first ten dismal minutes.