Dracula Review – Besson’s Love-Struck Reimagining of the Classic Horror Story is Ridiculous but Engaging

Perhaps there is no great enthusiasm for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for polished extravagance. However, one must admit: his lavishly upholstered vampire romance has ambition and panache – and with its B-movie charm, I might just favor to it to the recent, stately interpretation by Robert Eggers of Nosferatu. A few strange elements appear, like a particular moment that seems to depict a geographic divide between France and Romania.

Christoph Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Vampire-Hunting Priest

Christoph Waltz plays a witty yet careworn man of the church pursuing the undead – it feels natural for him to tackle such a part earlier – who ends up in Paris in 1889 for the French Revolution centenary celebrations. So does the malevolent vampire count, enacted by the seasoned horror actor Caleb Landry Jones using a distorted Eastern European tone evoking Carell’s Gru character in the Despicable Me films. This character he seemed destined to play.

The Story: A Tale of Love and Loss

The story is this: the vampire lord has traveled ceaselessly the earth in torment over four centuries following his rise as one of the undead, a consequence for his faithless sorrow after the passing of his spouse Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, the offspring of Rosanna Arquette). The count has been searching, searching, searching for a female who would be the return of his lost love. As ill fortune would have it, the fortunate female turns out to be Mina (also Bleu, of course), the modest betrothed of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), who has recently been to Dracula’s fortress to review his land assets and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.

Besson’s Direction and Humorous Style

Besson structures Dracula’s flashback sequence of worldwide travels in various outrageous costumes skillfully, and he doesn’t shy away from giving us some comedy moments in the style of Mel Brooks – such as the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to kill himself after Elisabeta’s death, as well as absurd moments that occur when Dracula applies to himself in a certain perfume in historic Florence, that renders him compelling to the opposite sex. Ridiculous and watchable.

Dracula can be streamed online from 1 December and on DVD and Blu-ray starting the twenty-second of December. It plays in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.