When a unique corpse winds up on their examination table, a set of young doctors soon discover that the body before them is extremely valuable. In hopes of making a quick fortune they begin to make plans to sell their finding, but a lone priest has something else in mind for the recently (presumably) deceased. But will either side be able to carry out their mission before evil once again awakens?

Dracula II: Ascension is the direct to video follow-up to Wes Craven’s Dracula 2000, but does it have any bite to it? Well yes, but it does it with a pretty blunt pair of fangs.

The story picks up only minutes after the last film ended. Dracula’s body has been cut down and rushed to a near by hospital. From here the story is pretty lame and unbelievable.

A bunch of young med students and their wheelchair-bound professor, played by the terribly wooden Craig Sheffer, haul the body out to the boonies to wait for a mysterious benefactor to come and pay them for their incredible find. But while they are waiting, they’re going to try some experiments on the corpse to see what happens to it. Before you can say Nosferatu, old Drac is awake and up to his old tricks again, for a few seconds anyway.

While all this is going on a bad-ass priest is on the hunt for the forever undead prince. You can tell he is a bad-ass because one: he dresses in a long leather duster, two: he uses a sword and a whip instead of a gun, three: most of the time he moves in slow motion and four: he’s played by Jason Scott Lee, who I have always felt is an underused action star. Sanctioned and trained by the holy church, Father Uffizi, that’s Lee’s character if you weren’t paying attention early in the review, has one goal on his list, end the reign of Dracula forever.

Now as you can imagine, the awakened Dracula, the kung-fu priest, the student body count and the mysterious benefactor are all going to have a little run in out in the woods, but before that happens, your gonna get a few kills and fights thrown into the mix and even a couple of plot twists that creep in here and there.

Dracula II: Ascension is not as bad as it sounds or even as bad as it could be, I actually enjoyed it quite a lot thanks in part to Lee’s character and the character of Luke played by Jason London, who truly delivers some great vampire-geek-fanboy moments during the film. The sad part about this one is basically the underuse of Dracula himself, he really gets no interaction in the film until the final few moments. Also actor Gerard Butler doesn’t return as Dracula in this follow up and the new actor Stephen Billington looks nothing like the character of Dracula in any way, in fact he looks more like blonde beach bunny.

In the end though I was fairly entertained by this flick, it has it’s flaws but it was still a pretty good watch and has a very decent kill scene in it and some of the character interactions were very well done.

6 of 10