Dracula Review – Besson’s Love-Struck Reimagining of the Gothic Classic is Outlandish but Entertaining
Maybe interest is limited for a fresh take of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro for polished extravagance. However, it’s worth noting: his opulently crafted vampire romance displays creativity and style – and with its B-movie charm, I might just favor compared with Robert Eggers’s recent, solemnly classy version of Nosferatu. A few strange elements appear, like a particular moment that looks like it presents a land border between France and Romania.
Christoph Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Priest Tracking the Undead
Christoph Waltz embodies a clever but beleaguered vampire-hunting priest – I can’t believe he hasn’t played this role before – who finds himself in Paris in 1889 for the French Revolution centenary celebrations. So does the evil Count Dracula, enacted by the seasoned horror actor Caleb Landry Jones using a distorted Eastern European tone similar to Carell’s Gru character in the Despicable Me films. This is a part he seemed destined to play.
The Plot: A Chronicle of Longing
The plot unfolds as follows: the count has wandered endlessly the earth in sorrow for 400 years since he became undead, a penalty for his faithless sorrow over the death of his spouse Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). The count has been searching, searching, searching for a female who might be the return of his deceased partner. As ill fortune would have it, the lucky lady turns out to be Mina (also Bleu, of course), the reserved future wife of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), who just traveled to Dracula’s fortress to negotiate his real estate holdings and the tiny painting of the lovely Mina drew the vampire’s attention.
Besson’s Direction and Comic Flair
Besson arranges Dracula’s flashback sequence of global roaming in various outrageous costumes with a sure hand, and he is not above providing humorous scenes in the style of Mel Brooks – for example the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to kill himself after Elisabeta’s death, along with farcical scenes that follow Dracula applies to himself with a specific fragrance in historic Florence, which makes him unavoidably attractive to females. Ridiculous and watchable.
Dracula is available digitally from 1 December and on DVD and Blu-ray starting the twenty-second of December. It will be shown in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.