Dracula II: Ascension (R)
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Caution: potential spoilers.

This came out in 2003, but I didn't see it until 2015. It's a direct-to-video sequel to Dracula 2000. I was expecting it to suck (no pun intended), but actually I didn't think it was that bad. I thought it seemed sort of more serious than the first movie (certainly less amusing, but also less silly). Nothing really scary, beyond cheap jump scares, but it had some vaguely interesting bits, I guess.

It begins with a man chasing a woman... I sort of got the impression we were meant to think he was a vampire and she was a potential victim, but I could be wrong about that, because I also thought it wasn't hard to figure out that she was actually the vampire, and he was a vampire hunter. Anyway, he catches her and does his badass thing, but ends up getting infected before killing her. The next morning, he goes out in the sunlight, presumably to kill himself, and it seems like the light kills him. (I guess this was all happening in Europe somewhere. I think there was some text on screen that said where exactly, but I forget.) Oh yeah, and the guy's a priest.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans, a professor named Lowell (who's in a wheelchair and has a degenerative disease) is giving a lecture to his class of medical students. Later, one of the students, Elizabeth (who is also Lowell's girlfriend) is working in the morgue with another student, Luke (Jason London). He brings in a burnt corpse, which we know is Dracula. (This makes no sense, because at the end of the first movie, his remains were taken away by Mary and Simon. But whatever, just pretend that never happened, okay?) Anyway, Elizabeth and Luke examine the body, and soon come to the conclusion that it's a vampire. While checking the corpse's teeth, a fang punctures Elizabeth's finger. She calls Lowell on the phone, and then Luke gets a mysterious call from someone who wants to pay them $30 million for the body. At the same time, we see that the priest, Father Uffizi (Jason Scott Lee), is now in New Orleans, looking for Dracula.

Btw, if there was any explanation as to how he knew Dracula was there, I forgot. I know there was later a flashback of him talking with another priest... or maybe it wasn't a flashback, I wasn't even sure. But whatever, the movie doesn't need to make sense, dammit. Oh, also I should mention that he had become a vampire, but he managed not to turn evil, through self-flagellation, apparently. Or because the sunlight burned the vampire out of him while he still had enough humanity left to survive. Or something. (But there was definitely self-flagellation involved.) I think it was also during this scene that we learned why Dracula is played by a different actor in this movie than in the last one... and by a third actor in the next movie. (It's kind of like Doctor Who, I guess.)

Anyway, Elizabeth and Luke were taking the body to meet the guy who wanted to buy it, but then they get instructed by Lowell to change their plans. They take it to an old abandoned house, where they're joined by a couple of their fellow students, Kenny and Tanya. (Kenny's played by Khary Payton, whom I know for some voice work.) Lowell directs their actions over the phone or computer or whatever. They chain the corpse up and submerge it in a tub of blood. A couple of hours pass where apparently nothing happens, but finally they decide to take the body out... and of course it attacks them. And Tanya gets killed. Then a British guy named Eric shows up, and stops Dracula's rampage with a "sun gun" (which uses UV light). He says he's a representative of the guy who wants to buy the body (which is now alive). They take Dracula to a "more secure location" for further tests, but there's some infighting amongst the group of friends. (Incidentally, Eric seemed pretty cool for awhile, until the point where he says to a chained-up Dracula, "Who's your daddy?" After that it becomes increasingly clear that he's just been posturing, and is far removed from being an actual badass.) Meanwhile, Father Uffizi continues his search, which leads him to the house that had recently been vacated by the group of students. Anyway... Lowell wants to learn how to use vampire blood to cure diseases (such as his own) and make people immortal... but preferably without them becoming "evil." Not everyone is as optimistic about their odds as he is, especially Luke.

And um, I don't want to say much more about the plot. Of course Uffizi eventually finds them, and has a badass fight with Dracula. But for most of the movie, Dracula was pretty effectively incapacitated, so scares either came from other, less important vampires, or from psychological drama or whatever. (Edit in 2017: When I finally got around to reading the original novel, I couldn't help thinking this movie was surprisingly similar, in the sense that Dracula himself didn't play a major role in that, either.) There were also some bits of the movie that I didn't entirely understand (and don't really care to). But um... whatever. I dunno. I didn't think the movie was a waste of my time, anyway. It was sort of fun. I guess.

Followed by Dracula III: Legacy