Paul Andrews Vlad starts as four foreign exchange students arrive in Romania where they are to travel to the Carpathian mountains in order to conduct research on their respective thesis which all involve Dracula, Vampires, Romania or the legends surrounding them, a guy named Adrian (Billy Zane) & his mate Rafescu (Brad Dourif) accompanies them as guides. On the way they come across a time travelling woman named Ilona (Iva Hasperger) who was once married to the infamous Vlad Tepes (Francesco Quinn). One of the students Lindsey (Monica Davidescu) has a secret, she has a ancient necklace that belonged to Vlad & supposedly gave him his powers & intends to return it after her Grandfather stole it during the second World War. But the necklace gives Vlad his power back & he sets out to reclaim his wife & the necklace...Written & directed by Michael D. Sellers this confusing mess of a romantic Vampire drama doesn't have a lot going for it, in fact I would have little hesitation in saying Vlad is rather anaemic. The script is a mess, there's all these flashback sequences that don't make much sense as well as ideas that just seem out of place like the whole sub-plot with the necklace & Ilona who for some strange reason that is never explained manages to travel hundreds of years into the future seemingly at random. Vlad isn't really a traditional Vampire film to be fair to it, it focuses on Vlad (the real life person who the character of Dracula was supposedly based on) & tries to paint him as a tortured soul as we see these annoying flashbacks to his past & what he has suffered. A character driven film about Dracula? What is the world coming to? Vlad never drinks anyone's blood, he randomly appears about halfway through the film with no explanation, he can walk in the sunlight & can change into a Wolf. He doesn't seem to have much of a plan except get his wife back & the necklace, hardly the most exciting plot or motivation for a character ever. The other character's are no better, no-one is likable & they all do stupid things & a sub-plot about a secret organisation trying to steal the necklace is raised but then completely forgotten about. The narrative is also very bitty, the location changes constantly with little regard to continuity & scenes don't seem to flow into each other that smoothly which left me somewhat confused.So the actual story & script has virtually zero entertainment value as far as I am concerned but to give Vlad some credit it does look quite nice on occasion, there's a nice visual style to it & while sometimes it can look a bit too staged it's pretty nice to look at. One thing I have to mention are the accents, they are absolutely terrible & is Billy Zane meant to be Romanian or Russian? The thick poorly executed accents make some of the dialogue hard to understand & at certain points character's randomly start talking in Romanian which is annoying too. Vlad has no gore whatsoever, in fact I don't think a single drop of human blood is seen during the entire film, a Wolf is shot at the end & it's body is seen but that's it. This is a very soft film. There are one or two clumsily edited sex scenes randomly inserted into the film but they don't improve it any. Vlad goes for storytelling & drama rather than scares & gore which is fine if you have a good engaging story that's well written, unfortunately Vlad doesn't.Actually shot in Buchrest in Romania the film certainly has an authentic look & feel about it, as I said it does look quite nice & I'll give it that. One of the hardest working men in the acting business Billy Zane is the 'name' actor here & he doesn't seem that interested with a poor accent & has the good sense to be killed off before the hour mark, the only other actor of note is Brad Dourif who is a genre regular.Vlad is part historical drama, part romance, part horror & all crap. Sorry but that's the way I feel about it, to be honest it didn't do anything for me at all & I just thought it was a mess of ideas none of which come together with any coherency. Not recommend.

disdressed12 i will be fair here and say that i didn't watch the whole movie.the reason is i found it way too slow and boring,plus it just looked too low budget.low budget isn't always a bad thing,when the rest of the movie is good.sometimes you don't even notice the budget.for me that is not the case with this movie.i have heard of some of the actors in this movie,and they've done some good work in the past.but in tis movie,it just seemed like no one wanted to be there.this is just my opinion and i could be wrong,but that's how i saw things.anyway,the bottom line is,from what i saw,this movie wasn't going anywhere fast.i give Vlad a 3/10

darrenbarnes Most published novels and short stories are pretty good. Sure there are a few stinkers, but on the whole the stories are worth your time.The same certainly can't be said for the boat load of poor movie scripts out there, and Vlad proudly continues that trend. A promising storyline with a terrible script and acting. Many of the actor's lines were laughable, and numerous scenes didn't flow properly.Whether it's independent or big budget, I can't believe a studio would make a film such as Vlad, with a script that could be outdone by many high school English students.

José Luis Rivera Mendoza (jluis1984) First of all, "Vlad" is a different kind vampire movie. It has almost nothing in common with the typical vampire movie and moves further in the Gothic fantasy genre, horror-fantasy would be a better term. Far away from typical clichés of the genre, this movie presents us a twist in the well known history of Count Dracula as it removes any link to Bram Stoker's novel and focuses on the myths that inspired Stoker's novel. This movie is a tale of Romanian vampires.The plot is a bit confusing, but at its core, it is about four graduated students who are selected by a Rumanian organization that will fund their research for their final thesis as their projects deal with Rumanian folklore and/or Vlad Tepes, the legendary ruler of Valachia who inspired Stoker to write the famous novel. The organization, lead by Radescu (Brad Douriff), is in fact a facade for an ancient order created by Tepes centuries ago, and their purposes will reveal when one of the students, Linsey (Monica Davidescu), reveals her secret: Her family had stolen a medallion from Vlad's grave.The secret powers of the medallion will create chaos as the members of the order try to find it, for different purposes everyone, and the students are in the middle of the struggle aided by Adrian (Billy Zane), a loyal agent of Radescu who tries to avoid the rebirth of Vlad.Now, the plot is for once very clever and quite interesting. The writers really did a great research when they wrote the story as it includes pieces of real history, Romanian folklore and Vlad Tepes' biography. Of course, spiced with fantasy and horror elements. Nevertheless, this is also its big problem, the movie tries to accomplish many tasks and this creates a confusing script. Certainly, a bigger budget would have resulted in a longer movie, and a longer movie would have fixed the confusion.Depsite that huge problem, the movie works at its level, with an incredibly looking visuals, thanks to the beautiful Romanian locations and the amazing camera-work. It's indeed surprising how much they could make with so small budget.Sadly, the budget hurts the SFX and they look as if they came from a cheap TV series. This indeed decreases a work of good quality, but fortunately, they focus on acting and not in SFX, so it is not that notorious.The acting is very good, and the young actors show promise. While some of the characters were not very developed, the actors did a good job with the little they had and the result is pretty good. Again, a bit more of care in the script would have resulted in outstanding performances, but yet, the actors carry the film with grace.Last but not least, the most remarkable feature of this movie is without a doubt the music. It is an outstanding work and it is a shame that the movie had not been more known, because the music is really outstanding. Few times a b-movie has a score this good and the movie really makes the most of it.While probably this movie is not Oscar material, it is certainly among the best vampire movies of this decade. Or at least, among the most original. A great fantasy movie. 6.5/10