I don't expect much from a movie like this. I don't expect great acting, deep and meaningful dialog, or grand statements on the human condition. What I expect is a cool vampire, good one-liners, good cinematography and set design, and a good pace. I got none of them, which is why this movie was so terrible. Laughable, even, especially the end, when the "origins" of Dracula are "revealed." The movie is so patently ridiculous by that time, unable to add a single new thought or shot to the tired vampire genre, that the ending only provokes relieved laughter that it's all over. Apparently, the filmmakers rushed to get it out in 2000, or else they would have had to change the title, and maybe think a little about the stinkbomb they were about to release. How did this get a theatrical release?

The film starts out pretty creepily, although any thought about what's going on will already have you questioning the talents of the writer. Christopher Plummer, who was born to play the bad guy, is a descendant of Van Helsing, the famed vampire hunter from Bram Stoker's novel who dispatches the vampire prince. Here, Plummer insists that his ancestor was dragged unwittingly into the story, that he was just a country doctor with a cool name. But Plummer has something to hide. Deep beneath his building is a vault that is protected by a state of the art security system. Nobody knows what's in the vault except Plummer. This does not stop several of his underlings, led by Omar Epps and Jennifer Esposito, from undertaking an expensive and difficult break-in of the vault. "I said he guarded it like gold," she snaps when there doesn't appear to be anything down there except a cleverly-sealed coffin. When it appears that they will be discovered, they blow out the side of the vault (why didn't they just try that on the way in?), and make off with the coffin.

Of course, there has to be a way of waking up Dracula. In this case, some booby traps kill two of the burglars and their blood drips onto the coffin. Somehow it gets inside and wakes up the undead prince. Just then, when the logical thing to do would be to introduce a seductive and frightening actor as the vampire, we get... who the heck is Gerard Butler? He seems to be channeling Chris Sarandon—not the effective vampire Sarandon played in Fright Night, but more like the regular Chris Sarandon you might meet in a restaurant in Hollywood. Meaning, he's just an ordinary guy, and a complete failure as the lead vampire.

I will dispense with the plot summary after this: turns out, Van Helsing used some of Dracula's blood to keep himself alive, and also passed the blood on to his daughter, played by Justine Waddell. Dracula somehow knows that she's out there, and she has always been haunted by nightmares of him. It's inevitable that they will get together. This prompts what is, on further analysis, the dumbest idea in the film: Dracula says something like "I have waited for thousands of years for someone like me, born, not bitten." Hello?!? Why didn't you think of Van Helsing's method yourself? You had thousands of years to meditate on a plan.

The director and writer are veterans of straight-to-video horror sequel garbage, such as the endless Children of the Corn sequels, the endless The Prophecy sequels, and the last film of the Scream trilogy. Wes Craven produced, only barely sullying his questionable reputation on this garbage. No good vampire, no good one-liners, pace like the drive-through at Burger King, not even enough gorgeous vampiresses to tempt the wan hero (here played by Johnny Lee Miller)... I'm glad I didn't spend any money to see this (it was on HBO or something—a good excuse whenever anyone asks "Why did you pay to see that piece of crap?"). In short, skip it.