Dracula Review – Luc Besson’s Passionate Reinterpretation of the Classic Horror Story is Absurd but Watchable
It’s possible audiences aren’t clamoring for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the filmmaker known for glossiness and bloat. And yet, it’s worth noting: his lavishly upholstered love story with vampires has ambition and panache – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer to it to Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. A few strange elements appear, like a particular moment that appears to show a territorial boundary between France and Romania.
Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Clergyman Hunting Vampires
Christoph Waltz plays a clever but beleaguered man of the church pursuing the undead – it’s surprising he never took on this character previously – who ends up in Paris in 1889 to mark the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. Likewise present is the evil Count Dracula, enacted by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect evoking Steve Carell’s Gru from the Despicable Me comedies. It’s a role he seemed destined to play.
The Plot: A Tale of Love and Loss
The plot unfolds as follows: the count has traveled ceaselessly the globe in anguish for 400 years following his rise as one of the undead, a penalty for his faithless sorrow over the death of his wife, Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, daughter of Rosanna Arquette). Dracula has sought relentlessly for some woman who could be the return of his lost love. By cruel fate, the fortunate female is revealed as Mina (also Bleu, of course), the modest betrothed of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), who lately visited to the vampire’s estate to review his property portfolio and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina attracted Dracula’s gaze.
The Filmmaker’s Approach and Comic Flair
Besson arranges Dracula’s second-act backstory of global roaming sporting extravagant attire skillfully, and he is not above providing humorous scenes reminiscent of Mel Brooks – for example the count’s repeated and futile attempts to commit suicide after Elisabeta’s death, in addition to absurd moments that occur when Dracula applies to himself with a specific fragrance in 18th-century Florence, which makes him compelling to the opposite sex. Outlandish but entertaining.
Dracula can be streamed online beginning on the first of December and on DVD and Blu-ray from December 22nd. It screens in Australian cinemas starting February 5, 2026.
