Dracula Review – Luc Besson’s Romantic Reinterpretation of the Gothic Classic is Outlandish but Watchable
Perhaps there is no great enthusiasm for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the filmmaker known for glossiness and bloat. Still, one must admit: his lavishly upholstered romantic vampire tale has ambition and panache – and amid its theatrical camp, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer compared with Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. Odd details emerge, including one shot that seems to depict a territorial boundary between France and Romania.
The Veteran Actor as a Humorously Exhausted Vampire-Hunting Priest
Christoph Waltz embodies a humorous yet burdened vampire-hunting priest – it feels natural for him to tackle this role before – who ends up in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. The same goes for the sinister Dracula, enacted by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones with a mangled central European accent evoking Carell’s Gru character in the Despicable Me films. This character suits him perfectly.
The Plot: A Tale of Love and Loss
Here’s the premise: the count has traveled ceaselessly the globe in sorrow for hundreds of years after his transformation into a vampire, a penalty for his faithless sorrow after the passing of his spouse Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). Dracula has sought relentlessly for some woman who could be the rebirth of his lost love. As ill fortune would have it, the chosen woman is revealed as Mina (portrayed once more by Bleu), the reserved future wife of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who just traveled to Dracula’s fortress to review his real estate holdings and the tiny painting of the lovely Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.
Besson’s Direction and Comic Flair
Besson organizes Dracula’s middle-section history of global roaming in various outrageous costumes skillfully, and he is not above offering humorous scenes with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – such as the count’s repeated and futile attempts to end his own life after Elisabeta’s death, in addition to absurd moments that result after Dracula douses himself with a specific fragrance in 18th-century Florence, that renders him irresistible to women. Absurd yet engaging.
Dracula is on digital platforms from 1 December and in disc format from 22 December. It will be shown in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.
