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Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary (2002)

tomatometer

87

Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 60
Fresh: 52 | Rotten: 8

Guy Maddin's film is a richly sensuous and dreamy interpretation of Dracula that reinvigorates the genre.

90

Average Rating: 7.8/10
Critic Reviews: 21
Fresh: 19 | Rotten: 2

Guy Maddin's film is a richly sensuous and dreamy interpretation of Dracula that reinvigorates the genre.

audience

70

liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 2,505

My Rating

Movie Info

Idiosyncratic Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin resurrects the style and visual grammar of the silent cinema in this ambitious screen adaptation of the Royal Winnepeg Ballet's acclaimed dance production, which incorporates elements of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and F.W. Murnau's film Nosferatu. In 1897, a strange and mysterious visitor from the East, Dracula (Zhang Wei-Qiang), arrives in London, and soon puts the wealthy and pleasure-loving Lucy (Tora Birtwhistle) under his spell. Dracula next sets

Unrated, 1 hr. 15 min.

Drama, Horror, Musical & Performing Arts

Apr 27, 2004

Zeitgeist Film

All Critics (60) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (53) | Rotten (8) | DVD (7)

Though it sounds like an offbeat idea even for horror fans, the tech work is so well done that it could disarm unwary buffs attracted by the campy title.

September 26, 2007 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
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Just when you think that holly stakes, garlic, crucifixes and capes are all there is to vampire stories, Maddin and the Royal Winnipeg put Dracula back on his toes.

May 7, 2004 Full Review Source: Orlando Sentinel | Comment
Orlando Sentinel
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A dance version that gorgeously captures the Royal Winnepeg Ballet's artistry while razzing the xenophobia and carnal hysteria underpinning Bram Stoker's story.

January 29, 2004 Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune | Comment
Minneapolis Star Tribune
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A diversion that only makes you wish you could have seen Royal Winnipeg's original ballet.

October 9, 2003 Comment
Arizona Republic
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Amusing as it is strange, Maddin's movie lingers in consciousness as a one-of-a-kind affair that emanates from a truly creative consciousness.

August 22, 2003 Comment
Denver Rocky Mountain News
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Maddin turns an old, dusty classic into something grippingly new.

August 8, 2003 Comment
Washington Post
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... the most startlingly original and creative reading of the novel ever put to film.

December 21, 2010 Full Review Source: Parallax View | Comment
Parallax View

An elaborate, self-conscious but arresting take on the Dracula myth.

September 26, 2007 Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | Comment
Guardian [UK]

A fevered, sexy take on the material, it plays up the desires of the female players, the repression of the men and Dracula's status as all-purpose object of dread and desire.

April 1, 2006 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | Comment
Empire Magazine

By the end, you'll wonder why all films aren't made this way.

February 11, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out | Comment

A production that is as sexually charged as it is beautifully designed.

December 6, 2005 Full Review Source: Film Threat | Comment
Film Threat

Maddin's Dracula takes us fantastically through gothic places that Bram Stoker failed to report in a production that is as sexually charged as it is beautifully designed.

August 17, 2004 Full Review Source: JWR | Comment

Marries B&W silent horror-movie style with beautifully eerie ballet in a succulently cinematic, lustfully melodramatic adaptation that is at once wholly unique and uncommonly faithful to Bram Stoker's classic novel.

June 4, 2004 Full Review Source: SPLICEDWire | Comment
SPLICEDWire

It's 'Nosferatu' meets 'The Red Shoes' in this sexy new DVD

June 2, 2004 Full Review Source: Horror.com | Comment

Anybody whoâ(TM)s willing to bring their own ideas about sex, love, and bloodletting to the film will likely find themselves sucked into Maddinâ(TM)s growing cult.

May 18, 2004 Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | Comment
Filmcritic.com

It's a throwback to the days when horror movies often had a certain visual grandeur. And while one may miss a modern frisson or two, there's still a great deal of dreadful beauty to relish.

May 7, 2004 Full Review Source: Orlando Weekly | Comment
Orlando Weekly

This film does for ballet what Robert Altman's recent dud The Company couldn't: It brings the dance form alive on screen, at once making it sexy, stylish and relevant.

March 10, 2004 Full Review Source: Creative Loafing | Comment
Creative Loafing

Much of it is dazzling and erotic, a postmodern variation on a theme of German expressionism and Gothic horror.

February 2, 2004 Full Review Source: Boston Herald | Comment
Boston Herald

Attractive art house picture.

January 15, 2004 Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | Comment
Guardian [UK]

Relying on the stage performance alone, there is little interesting about watching Dracula, Lucy, or Nina, pirouetting and prancing within their milieu.

December 31, 2003 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | Comment
eFilmCritic.com

It's a thoroughly rousing parade of invention. And visual? Like nothing you've ever seen.

December 12, 2003 Full Review Source: Oregonian | Comment
Oregonian
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary

Guy Maddin directed this extraodinary interpretation of Bram Stoker's Dracula by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Several episodes of the original story are narrated lineally with dance and the help of intertitles. Consider this is a 73 minute adaptation of a very, very long and complex book. Do not be very demanding in what

April 1, 2009
ebs90
Elvira B

Super Reviewer

An inventive treat, Pages... is the classic novel presented as a silent movie ballet. It is acted entirely with ballet performers and filmed using techniques employed usually in silent films. This combination of factors gives the film a rather unique feel, a merging of classic formula with postmodern styling. This time

November 1, 2006
guttersnipe28
Antony Stubbs

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Dracula, pages tirées du journal d'une vierge (FR)
  • Drácula: Página del diario de una virgen (ES)
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