One of the best vampire movies of all time, Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ is a 1992 gothic horror and romance film based on the legendary gothic horror novel Dracula. Taking a look at the movie after all these years, it is finally made evident just how brilliant it is.

One of the biggest aspects of any book adaptation is respect to the source material, which is plenty as this is perhaps the most faithful adaptation Dracula has ever seen. Yet there is a romantic angle to the film, which makes it completely different from the novel. Instead of portraying him as an outright evil creature, the movie presents a more sympathetic angle to Dracula, of how he defended God’s Church and how during his war with Ottomans, through deceit they got his wife killed and made him abandon God, and embracing Satan becoming the vampire Dracula, the prince of darkness.

In a marriage of lavishness, ambition and pure creepiness, Gary Oldman as Dracula is by far the best Dracula there has ever been. All the way from his charm as the old and decrepit looking count to a young rejuvenated one, there is an underlying sense of bestiality. It is as if his mouth is constantly dripping, he views all living creatures as prey and all of the world is his hunting ground. Here, Dracula is darkness itself. This film really showed us just how demonic vampires truly are.

The best of movies have a certain quality that prevent them from ageing, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one such film. The overall aesthetic of the movie, comprising its cinematography, set design, costume design, tone, music and makeup make it as phenomenal a film as it is, thus partially contributing to its agelessness and why it still holds up so well today. Another one is its lack of CGI, with the film-makers going old school, with methods such as rear projection, multiple exposure, miniature effects, front projection etc. Richly textured, passion driven with both style and substance, this is by far the greatest Dracula film of all time, Coppola set the benchmark on how to make gothic horror.