On Feb. 3, Universal Studios’ Dracula Untold came out on Blu-Ray. Dracula, the novel by Bram Stoker, came out in 1897. Though over 100 years and divergent interpretations separate the two works, both contain useful moral lessons.
This isn’t a review of either work and it’s not free of spoilers. It would be impossible to examine the full moral implications of the stories without mentioning the endings.
The novel Dracula is a triumph-of-good-versus-evil story. The villainous vampire Count Dracula comes to England to prey upon its citizens. A band of heroes whose friend was an early victim of the Count cast aside their safety to end this scourge.
Dracula is deeply, frighteningly evil. The heroes are upstanding Christians, though flawed enough to be plausible. Through virtue, mutual support, and, above all, reliance on God, they kill Dracula and save the day.
The novel is excellent for the moral imagination, because the good shines through its darkness. It is certainly dark: The vampire, as depicted by Stoker, is a Satanic parody both of Holy Communion and of sex. But opposed to him are characters who, throughout all the horror, hold onto faith, hope, and love. These heroes are both virtuous and likeable. The reader wishes to be like them and this is good for his soul.
The film Dracula Untold instructs in a different way. Rather than giving role models to imitate, it functions like Macbeth, giving an example to avoid.
In Untold, Dracula begins as a handsome prince and doting father. But when the Turks threaten to kidnap 1,000 Transylvanian boys — including his son — he makes a Faustian bargain, gaining the powers of the vampire with which to defend his kingdom.
He is the epitome of the modern anti-hero: He is powerful and “cool,” a ferocious warrior who can turn into a cloud of bats and wears black armor. He is fiercely independent: Exercising very little delegation, he prefers to crush his foes personally. He is a consequentialist, at one point explaining that he impaled thousands of innocent people in order to save the even greater number whom he frightened into surrender.
Following his own moral compass, he defends those he loves by any means necessary. And he fails. By the end of the movie, he has killed his wife, his son is taken from him, and most of his people have been killed. Twice.
You read that correctly. Facing defeat by the Turks, Dracula drinks his wife’s blood, killing her and making his borrowed vampire powers permanent. Returning to his castle, he finds the Turks have massacred his subjects. In a chilling scene, he has the haggard survivors drink his blood and become vampires themselves. With his newly-transformed vampire army, he lays waste to the Turks and rescues his son. But then the undead turn on him, wishing to devour the child for which he did all this.
In a powerful illustration of grace, monks bearing crucifixes arrive just in time to save his son and drag the young boy away to safety. Dracula, realizing the evil of the vampires, parts the clouds and they are all killed by the sunlight.
The movie’s anti-hero is left dead, wifeless, childless, in a field strewn with the charred corpses of the subjects he was supposed to protect.
Our generation seems tired of straightforward heroes. Stoker’s Victorian heroes are passé. Moviegoers prefer dark knights, egotistical hedonists who save the day anyway, and men who will do anything to get the job done.
I expected Dracula Untold, by making Dracula the protagonist, to be dangerously subversive. It was indeed subversive, but instead of subverting traditional morality, it subverted the modern anti-hero genre. Dracula Untold provides a useful service by making the straightforward goodness of the original novel’s heroes seem not only appealing, but essential.
