Castlevania

Our Review

The video-game adaptation that broke the curse: Warren Ellis’s dark-fantasy epic — Trevor Belmont (Richard Armitage), Sypha the Speaker mage, and Alucard (Dracula’s half-vampire son) team up to kill Dracula — and the show is much smarter than its premise: Dracula’s war on humanity is a grief-rage (his human wife burned as a witch — the best villain motivation the genre’s had in decades), and the human collaborators give the conflict real moral texture.

The action (the hallway battles, the sypha-light… the spellwork) is spectacular, the seasons 2-4 expansion (the vampire council’s schemes, Isaac and Hector’s forge-master arcs) builds a real world, and the dialogue’s Shakespearian bite suits the gothic register perfectly. The best Western anime-style action series, and the proof games can adapt.

Verdict: Watch it. The night the curse gets its due.