Out of FrightFest, Chris Schwab’s Dracula: The Night Around Us offers a thrilling new interpretation of Bram Stoker’s groundbreaking 1897 novel. It’s a career-making piece with classic vintage camera shots (e.g., the light falling perfectly over a character’s eyes) and moody, skin-shredding images that delight and perfectly horrify. In a crowded marketplace of mediocre vampire stories, the writer/director breathes life into the tired, cliché-ridden subgenre, inviting the audience to give the material a second look. It’s no easy feat, but Schwab tears his way through the story with both ambition and reverence.
Dr. John Seward (Eric Toms) meets psychiatric patient Renfield (Spencer Weitzel), newly admitted and forced into a straitjacket. He laughs sheepishly at the doctors and displays manic behavior. As Dracula’s harbinger, he spouts warnings that make Dr. Seward’s blood run cold. After work one evening, he notices that Mina (Marlene Mc’Cohen) and her daughter, Lucy (Raelan Mackiewicz), have just moved in down the hallway of the apartment building. Seward befriends them when Lucy invites him to dinner, an act of reconciliation following a misunderstanding involving Lucy and Seward mocking one another with silly faces. Mina apologizes for her coldness toward him, and soon, they trade a few laughs and share sly smiles.
All is well in their world until Lucy sleepwalks into the city streets. Mina discovers a dark creature, the one and only Dracula, hunched over her unmoving body. He sucks her blood, resulting in major health concerns, and so begins the hunt for this unholy beast. Dr. Seward confronts Renfield about what’s going on. Renfield simply howls in his face like the psychopath that he is. Schwab sets the story in a nondescript time, giving the film a timeless quality. It’s modern enough but without cell phones, so perhaps it’s the late ’80s or ’90s. Such a creative decision allows him to play and experiment with style, feel, and aesthetic without being beholden to technology.
Dracula: The Night Around Us runs 70 minutes and never wastes a single moment. It’s lean and mean, gets straight to the meat of the story, and doesn’t sacrifice a complete plot. Schwab, who also worked as the cinematographer, shows a deep understanding of the approach of a classic 1930s or ’40s horror film. Decorative lighting choices are not simply flashy showpieces. They serve a purpose, stressing the swelling tension, urgency, and slow, calculated descent into Dracula’s madness.
Chris Schwab’s Dracula: The Night Around Us is one of the best Dracula adaptations of all time. It’s grim, tantalizingly bloody, and entrancing. It’s almost like being hypnotized by a hypnotist’s wheel. You become trapped within Schwab’s grasp with no agency to move or scream. Eventually, you become just another one of Dracula’s pale, bug-eyed victims.
Leave a Reply