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.