Horror as Romance

In my previous post, I left you all, or at least any of you that found the post interesting, with a sort of teaser, promising to reveal my understanding of a horror film that I had watched the other day as romance. The example that I used was a rather poor movie called Dracula II: Awakening, but I think that by breaking this film down we can begin to see the pattern throughout each film and move on from there.

1) First the story, which is perhaps the easiest to explain. The movie is of course related to the book Dracula by Bram Stoker and, through that connection, allows the audience to place itself in the midst of the entire gamut of vampire stories modeled off the first. Each story brings to the tale its own characters and places, but they all weave through one another in a delicate pattern that provides more depth both for preceding and succeeding installments.

2) Remembrance. The rest of the details of the romance are hard to argue unless we look at them from the correct angle. Using a seemingly minor character from the beginning called Luke, we see him transform from an unsure EMT into a confident and self-assured individual that seeks to not only stop the other characters in their endeavors to control the vampire Dracula and use his blood to cure mortality. He is then revealed as a heroic figure, a man willing and able to step into the line of fire and fight the forces of evil.

3) Quest. Once again we must look at our friend Luke who is attracted to one of the other characters though she is in love with the man attempting to harness the vampire's power. We see the quest in the young man's attempts to alter her perceptions and later to save her from the disease that she is falling prey to.

4) Apparent Death. Though it is hard to see apparent death in a film that involves so much bloodshed and murder, if we look closely, the answer becomes apparent. There is a religious aspect to it, but the answer is there all the same. Each soul in the movie is absolved through the forgiveness of God, granting them, in the end, eternal life and not the death that we first thought. This even applies to Dracula.

5) Happy Ending. Perhaps the hardest to explain, especially considering that the hero does not get the girl (at least not in this film) and Dracula is not yet dead. Yet, the film ends with hope for the future. Neither Luke nor his new mentor is dead and the two have a mission to not only absolve the soul of the first vampire of all its sins and send it to its final rest, but Luke also seems determined to save the girl that he has always loved. Hope is always a happy ending.

I realize that this may not have been my best work, but it's not fair to do all the work for you guys. My challenge then is to watch some movies that you may have never thought or considered in the realm of romance and see if you can find the patterns lurking beneath the surface.