Review: Dracula II: Ascension

Med students Diane Neal and Jason London are examining a charred dead body when someone calls to offer to take the body off their hands for a large monetary offer, but instead they take it to an abandoned house on the advice of Neal’s disabled professor boyfriend Craig Sheffer. The body turns out to be a vampire (Stephen Billington), naturally, and Sheffer seems to think he/it would make for a cool test subject in some kinda clearly non college-sanctioned experiment. Meanwhile, a roguish priest (Jason Scott Lee!) turns up with motives only slowly revealed (And by that I mean you have to wait until “Dracula III: Legacy”). John Light plays Sheffer’s seedy cohort, Brande Roderick is another student, whilst Roy Scheider and David Gant play religious authoritarians.

Remember when Miramax were the awards darlings who were responsible for such acclaimed films as “sex, lies, and videotape”, “Pulp Fiction”, “Shakespeare in Love” and “Good Will Hunting? Remember when Dimension released a whole slew of horror pics into cinemas like “Scream”, “Mimic”, “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn”, and “The Faculty”? Well, it would appear that both Miramax and Dimension eventually went into the business of direct-to-DVD sequels to franchise horror films, with entries in the “Hellraiser”, “Mimic”, “Prophecy”, “Children of the Corn”, and “Dracula” series seemingly their bread and butter in the middle of the 00s.

The “Dracula” films are among the strangest movie franchises, because the original “Dracula 2000” (which did make it to cinemas) wasn’t all that much good and didn’t set the box-office alight, either. Nonetheless, co-writer/director Patrick Lussier (“Dracula 2000”, the remake of “My Bloody Valentine”, “Prophecy 3: The Ascent”- what’s with all this ascension?) and co-writer Joel Soisson (“Prophecy 3: The Ascent”) indeed made two sequels back-to-back, beginning with this one from 2003. It comes billed as ‘Wes Craven Presents’, but like “Dracula 2000” one should really read that as: ‘Hey, I used to edit Craven’s movies and he’s letting me name-drop him on my movies!’. Truth be told, the plot of this film (and the subsequent “Legacy”) barely resembles anything in “Dracula 2000”, but given the title and the shared director/writer, I feel safe in assuming the three films are related. Like “Dracula 2000”, it’s more competent than you might expect, and Lussier’s films always look good at the very least. Unfortunately, like “Dracula 2000”, it’s still not good and the vampire fangs still look woefully unconvincing and far too werewolf-like for me.

The film is harmless but forgettable. Added to that are at least two terrible performances by Diane Neal and Craig Sheffer in a cast full of mostly has-beens and hacks. Neal isn’t as irritatingly husky-voiced as she would end up being on “NCIS”, but she’s still awful (in a film that already stars Brande Roderick, I might add). Sheffer, meanwhile, is a genuinely talented actor who seems to do his very worst work in horror sequels, as evidenced in the abysmal “Hellraiser: Inferno” and here. As a wheelchair-bound professor, he’s about as convincing as Brande Roderick as a college student (Credit to Ms. Roderick though, for getting covered in blood and gore seemingly with gusto). Mannered as hell and with a completely foolish gravel-voice, I’m not quite sure what he’s trying to do here, but whatever it is, he’s failing. It’s so sad to see him so off-the-charts awful, surely he knows how bad he is here, right? Much better is Jason Scott Lee, who almost used to be somebody. Hey, he played Bruce Lee once and Bruce Lee was cool as fuck. As a rogue, possibly wuxia-inspired priest, he strikes an imposing figure, but he looks like he rather belongs in one of the “Prophecy” sequels (And indeed, he ended up in “The Prophecy: Forsaken”). His character chops off heads, though, and is therefore welcome in any movie if you ask me (he cuts off two in just the first scene!). I’m not sure how his career got to this point, but at least he’s not condescending to the material here. He gives it his best shot and should’ve been in a lot more of the film. Roy Scheider and the underrated David Gant also impress in miniscule roles, whilst Stephen Billington is perfectly acceptable as the vampire (never to my knowledge referred to as “Dracula”).

The FX are a bit of an improvement here over the previous film, including a great bit where someone gets their face bitten right off, followed by a scene where the same person re-emerges with teeth grown around the frame of where his face used to be! ‘Holy shit!’ and ‘what the hell?’ spring to mind. Jason London then does something I’ve never seen before by shoving a plastic bottle of holy water into the hole in the guy’s head! Wow! I also liked the ambiguity of Lee’s character, right from the opening scene Lussier toys with our expectations and Lee also wears dark sunglasses when the sun hits his eyes. Is he a vampire? Lee’s very casting probably tips the hand a bit, but still I liked the attempt at ambiguity. The film’s ending sucks, even though I knew there would be a third film, it’s simply unacceptable.

Not an awful film, surprising in that regard perhaps, but that isn’t even close to deserving a recommendation. Mediocre all the way.

Rating: C