Lucy -- perfect. Everything else -- horrible

Perhaps the worst adaptation I've ever seen. In fact, it can barely be called Dracula at all, and has little relation to the book. The set design was terrific, but that's about it.

With one exception.

Sophia Myles as Lucy was breathtakingly beautiful. She may be the only actress working today who actually possesses the kind of soft, round-faced, feminine beauty that would have been considered ideal in the Victorian era, so she was perfectly cast. Her vulnerability, her appetitive nature - Sophia embodied these traits utterly convincingly. In the wedding scene, she may have been the most gorgeous bride ever filmed.

It's a shame that so much of the film was heavily digitally graded. It obscured the natural colours. In one of the few scenes with natural light, you could see how enchantingly fair Sophia's complexion is. Otherwise, most of the outdoor scenes were coated in an unpleasant yellow haze.

So all it all, it's worth watching to see Sophia's incredible beauty. But that's it. Pity Sophia wasn't cast as Lucy in a truly faithful version of this classic novel.

All Dracula adaptations to date have this much in common: the closer they stick to Stoker, the better they are, and the more they go in a different direction, the worse they fail.