Dracula Review – The French Director’s Love-Struck Reimagining of the Classic Horror Story is Absurd but Watchable

Perhaps there is no great enthusiasm for an updated adaptation of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro for glossiness and bloat. Still, it has to be said: his lavishly upholstered romantic vampire tale boasts bold vision and flair – and with its B-movie charm, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer compared with the recent, stately interpretation by Robert Eggers of Nosferatu. A few strange elements appear, such as a scene that seems to depict a territorial boundary between France and Romania.

Christoph Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Priest Tracking the Undead

Christoph Waltz plays a witty yet careworn man of the church pursuing the undead – I can’t believe he hasn’t played this role before – who finds himself in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. So does the malevolent vampire count, played by the expert in grotesque roles Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect evoking the voice of Gru by Steve Carell from the Despicable Me comedies. This character that he too was born to take on.

The Story: A Saga of Heartbreak

Here’s the premise: Dracula has traveled ceaselessly the earth in anguish for hundreds of years after his transformation into a vampire, a punishment for his faithless sorrow following the loss of his spouse Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, the offspring of Rosanna Arquette). The count has been searching, searching, searching for a female who might be the reincarnation of his departed beloved. As ill fortune would have it, the chosen woman is revealed as Mina (portrayed once more by Bleu), the demure fiancee of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (enacted by Ewens Abid), who has recently been to the vampire’s estate to negotiate his real estate holdings and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina attracted Dracula’s gaze.

Besson’s Direction and Comic Flair

Besson arranges Dracula’s second-act backstory of global roaming sporting extravagant attire skillfully, and he willingly includes providing funny bits reminiscent of Mel Brooks – such as the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to end his own life after Elisabeta’s death, as well as comical sequences that occur when Dracula douses himself using a particular scent during the 1700s in Florence, that renders him compelling to the opposite sex. Outlandish but entertaining.

Dracula is available digitally beginning on the first of December and on DVD and Blu-ray from December 22nd. It screens in Australian cinemas beginning on the fifth of February, 2026.