Audible’s Dracula has a very attractive vampire problem. Jonathan Bailey plays the Count, Ella Purnell plays Mina, and this Mina has every intention of hunting him down. The full-cast audio adaptation is out now in Australia, just as October starts making a convincing argument for staying in with something unsettling.
The starry cast will get people through the door. But the more interesting promise is a contest of nerve and intelligence between a predator and the woman trying to stop him. That gives us something to anticipate beyond hearing familiar actors say deliciously ominous things.
Audible’s Dracula puts Mina on the trail
When Jonathan Harker disappears in Transylvania, Mina follows a trail of letters, diaries and testimony. Meanwhile, her friend Lucy falls under Dracula’s influence. With Professor Van Helsing joining the hunt, the story becomes a race to understand the danger before it consumes the people Mina loves.
Purnell describes her version of Mina as “absolutely determined to outsmart him and take him down”. That is a useful statement of intent. Fear is more interesting when the person experiencing it can make decisions, take risks and occasionally push back.
It also puts pressure on Bailey’s performance. A monster facing an intelligent opponent needs to persuade, misdirect and threaten. Seduction only gets him so far when the woman opposite him is assembling the evidence. If the adaptation makes that struggle convincing, the casting has a dramatic purpose as well as a very photogenic one.
A horror director knows what silence can do
Pet Sematary director Mary Lambert makes her audio directing debut here, working from Robyn Ahern’s adaptation with an original score by Ilan Eshkeri. That combination is appealing because audio horror can make an ordinary pause feel terribly crowded.
A listener cannot glance towards the edge of the frame to check whether something is lurking there. The production has to establish distance, intimacy and danger through performance and sound. Done well, that leaves your imagination doing the unpleasant work. A pair of headphones can make the threat feel uncomfortably close.
Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Professor Van Helsing, alongside Louis Partridge as Jonathan Harker, Aimee Lou Wood as Lucy and David Jonsson as Dr Seward. Johnny Flynn, Lesley Manville and Francis Lovehall also feature. There is plenty of talent here; the test is whether it feels like a living ensemble.
An October invitation with teeth
For anyone building a Halloween watchlist from our vampire film picks, this offers a change of medium. You can leave the screen dark and let the cast supply the company. Comforting thought, really.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula launched locally on 2 October and is available through Audible Australia. We have not reviewed the finished production yet, but Mina’s pursuit gives it a clear reason to exist among so many versions of this story. The Count may have the famous name. She has the investigation.
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