Sink your teeth into this! There’s a fresh take on Bram Stoker’s most infamous vampire heading to this year’s Tubi FrightFest, and you can get your first proper look right here exclusively at SciFiNow with the chilling new trailer for Dracula: The Night Around Us.
Written and directed by Chris Schwab (Heretic, Neither Day Nor Night), the modern reimagining of the classic horror will celebrate its UK Premiere at Tubi FrightFest on 30 August, screening as part of the festival’s Discovery Screen One strand.
Watch the new trailer below…
Inspired by Bram Stoker’s seminal novel, Dracula: The Night Around Us transports the iconic vampire tale to a contemporary Los Angeles, where an ancient evil lurks beneath the city streets.
For Schwab, however, revisiting Dracula wasn’t simply about remaking a familiar story. “Why Dracula? That was usually the first question I was asked when proposing this project to my usual collaborators,” he explains. “Many didn’t share my obsession with the book and subsequent films and various adaptations. They wondered how we were going to do a period piece on such a low budget. Who was going to play Dracula? Hasn’t this been done before? Why do this at all?”
His answer was to avoid a traditional period adaptation altogether.
The film follows Dr John Seward, a doctor at an asylum for the criminally insane whose bleak existence begins to brighten after meeting his neighbour Mina and her young daughter, Lucy. But while new relationships offer a glimmer of hope, Dracula is secretly building a harem of undead brides in the sewers below… and Lucy soon becomes his next victim.
Eric Toms leads the cast alongside Marlene Mc’Cohen (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Spencer Weitzel, Raelan Mackiewicz and Brent Jones.
Schwab’s lifelong love of the Count stretches back to childhood. “I’ve loved Dracula ever since I was a kid watching Monster Squad on repeat,” he says. “It wasn’t until I saw Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula on HBO in the early nineties that I became aware of the original story and novel by Bram Stoker. It would be many more years until I finally read the novel and loved it.”
He adds that no single adaptation has ever captured the definitive version of Stoker’s novel. “Ever since then I’ve been fascinated with how the novel has been adapted. There is no real definitive adaptation. Every one has its own unique take on the story. I dreamed about how I would approach it.”
That approach involved drawing inspiration from several classic screen versions while reshaping the story around one central character. “The first bit of inspiration I took was from the 1931 Universal Pictures Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, in which it is the character of Renfield who travels to Transylvania to meet the Count, not Jonathan Harker. In the wonderful 1977 BBC Count Dracula, the filmmakers combine the characters of Quincey and Arthur into one, creating Quincey Holmwood.
“This gave me loads of ideas for how to treat the story. I would focus my film on Dr. Seward and combine him with other characters such as Jonathan and Van Helsing. In addition, I decided to break up the story and jumble the set pieces to try to present the material in a new and fresh way.”
The setting itself also offered an opportunity to reinterpret the Gothic iconography of Dracula for a modern audience. “Instead of Dracula’s castle as crumbling stone rising into the night sky, I would use the towering steel and concrete bridges holding up the freeways in Los Angeles. Instead of the crypt where Dracula’s coffin lies undisturbed, it would be the sewers and tunnels underneath my feet.”
The film has already enjoyed festival success, making its World Premiere at the Portland Horror Film Festival earlier this year, where it picked up the Goule D’Or Award for Best Feature Film.
Speaking about bringing the film to FrightFest, Schwab said: “Dracula is a timeless story, and we’re thrilled to have been able to put a unique spin on one of cinema’s most iconic horrors.
“We can’t wait for London audiences to see what we’ve created.”
Dracula: The Night Around Us screens at Tubi FrightFest on 30 August as part of the Discovery Screen One programme.