The Count Comes to California (and Immediately Regrets It)
There’s a special kind of cinematic bravery required to modernize Dracula—and an even rarer kind required to do it in Los Angeles, on what appears to be a catering budget. Dracula Reborn (2012), directed by Patrick McManus in his feature debut, is one of those movies that makes you wonder if the filmmakers actually like the source material or if they just lost a bet with Bram Stoker’s ghost.
It’s a “reimagining” in the same way microwaving a frozen pizza is “reimagining Italian cuisine.” Sure, the basic ingredients are there—fangs, blood, a woman named Mina (or “Lina,” because apparently vowels are scary now)—but the taste is pure regret.
Set in Los Angeles, this movie trades the gothic castles of Transylvania for foreclosed condos and bad lighting. Dracula has gone from mysterious aristocrat to real estate investor, which is somehow both horrifying and extremely on-brand for California.
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if HGTV produced Nosferatu, congratulations—you’re about to find out.
The Plot: 50 Shades of Beige
Jonathan Harker (Corey Landis) is a realtor. His client, Vladimir Sarkany (Stuart Rigby), is actually Count Dracula—because of course a centuries-old vampire would move to L.A. and immediately invest in property. He’s buying an abandoned building in a “gang-dominated neighborhood,” which is both lazy social commentary and the film’s only attempt at tension.
Jonathan is married to Lina (Victoria Summer), a woman whose defining trait is “looks vaguely confused while being hypnotized.” The couple dreams of starting a family, because this is a horror movie and happy plans must always be punished.
When Jonathan visits Sarkany’s mansion—a modern, tastefully furnished home that screams “Dracula shops at IKEA”—he spots a painting that looks suspiciously like Lina. It’s Dracula’s dead girlfriend, because nothing says eternal romance like centuries of stalking women who look like your ex.
Things unravel when Dracula starts hypnotizing everyone, people die in mildly inconvenient ways, and Jonathan’s wife starts showing signs of vampirism—by which I mean she gets slightly paler and starts eyeing the family dog like it’s a ribeye.
There are also two detectives (Holmwood and Varna) investigating a murder, though their investigation mostly involves standing around and looking confused, which makes them perfect audience surrogates.
The Cast: Victims of Dialogue
Corey Landis plays Jonathan with all the emotional range of a cardboard cutout that’s seen things. His line readings are so flat you could use them as a spirit level. Watching him discover his wife is turning into a vampire is like watching someone mildly annoyed that Starbucks spelled his name wrong.
Victoria Summer’s Lina tries her best, but the script gives her nothing except fainting, gasping, and being hypnotized by a man who dresses like he just came from a GQ shoot.
Stuart Rigby, as Count Dracula (sorry, “Vladimir Sarkany”), looks like he wandered off the set of a perfume commercial called Eternal Night by Armani. He’s all cheekbones and smoldering stares but delivers his lines with the subtle menace of an underpaid magician at a mall.
And then there’s poor Keith Reay as Van Helsing—bless him. He plays the legendary vampire hunter as if he just woke up from a nap and can’t find his glasses. His fight scenes look like he’s trying to swat a mosquito with arthritis. When he finally meets Dracula, it’s less “epic showdown” and more “two dads arguing over a parking space.”
The Writing: A Stake to the Script
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a rich tapestry of dread, obsession, and repressed sexuality. Dracula Reborn is more like a half-finished paint-by-numbers kit someone spilled Monster Energy on.
Patrick McManus’s script takes every opportunity to defang the story—literally and figuratively. The dialogue sounds like it was translated from English to Romanian and back again using Google Translate circa 2006.
Here’s a sample exchange that might as well have been pulled straight from the cutting room floor:
Jonathan: “You’re a vampire.”
Dracula: “That word is old. I am… evolved.”
Me (at home): “So’s my phone, but it still sucks.”
The film tries to be modern and gritty but ends up being as sexy as a dental appointment. There’s no tension, no gothic atmosphere—just endless exposition and characters saying “vampire” like they’re ordering takeout.
The Horror: Fangless in L.A.
You’d think a movie about vampires in Los Angeles would lean into style and decadence, maybe with a little blood-soaked noir flair. Instead, Dracula Reborn looks like it was shot on a camcorder borrowed from someone’s uncle.
The cinematography is aggressively beige. Every scene is bathed in the kind of lighting you’d expect from a low-budget soap opera filmed in a dentist’s office. Even the nighttime scenes are somehow too bright—like Dracula couldn’t afford blackout curtains.
The special effects are… special. The vampire bites look like red Sharpie doodles, and when Dracula finally transforms into his “true form,” it’s so hilariously bad you start rooting for the visual effects team to unionize.
The film’s attempts at horror mostly consist of jump scares that don’t jump and blood that looks suspiciously like barbecue sauce. At one point, a character’s decapitation is implied entirely off-camera—probably to save money, but also because the movie was merciful enough not to show us more of itself.
Los Angeles: Land of Broken Dreams (and Worse Vampires)
One of the film’s few attempts at being clever is relocating the story to modern-day Los Angeles. Unfortunately, instead of using the city’s glitzy decadence as a metaphor for Dracula’s predation, the film treats L.A. like any random suburb with a couple of palm trees thrown in for texture.
Imagine Heat if everyone moved slower, talked less, and occasionally drank blood through a silly straw.
It’s such a waste of setting. Dracula Reborn could’ve been a slick, satirical look at Hollywood vampires literally feeding off the desperate. Instead, we get a property deal gone wrong and some light neck-nibbling. Even Twilight had more bite—and that’s saying something.
The Climax: Fifty Shades of Dumb
The final act should be the film’s saving grace: Jonathan and Van Helsing storm Dracula’s lair to save Lina. Instead, it plays out like the world’s slowest home invasion.
Van Helsing dies faster than you can say “underwritten,” and Jonathan spends most of the climax getting hypnotized again, because apparently the Count’s best weapon is intense eye contact.
When they finally manage to stake Dracula, it’s the least satisfying death in vampire cinema history. He crumbles into dust like someone unplugged his special effects budget.
But wait—there’s a twist! Lina’s now the vampire queen, having inherited Dracula’s house, power, and loyal manservant Renfield. So yes, this movie ends not with terror or catharsis but with a real estate upgrade.
Honestly, it’s the only believable part.
The Real Horror: Time You’ll Never Get Back
Dracula Reborn isn’t just bad—it’s existentially bad. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a blood transfusion that replaces your plasma with lukewarm Red Bull.
It’s not even “so bad it’s good.” It’s “so bad it’s background noise.” It’s the movie you put on when you’re folding laundry and want to feel grateful you’re doing something productive.
And yet, there’s a weird charm in its ineptitude. The cast clearly tries. The filmmakers clearly cared—just not enough to write dialogue that sounds like human speech.
If nothing else, it’s proof that Dracula can survive almost anything—wooden stakes, silver bullets, garlic, and even a screenplay this lifeless.
Final Verdict: Count Flopula
In the immortal words of Van Helsing (probably): “Some things are better left buried.”
Dracula Reborn bites off more than it can chew—and then immediately chokes on it. It’s not frightening, it’s not sexy, and it’s not even campy enough to enjoy ironically.
It’s just… undead.
