Dracula Review – Luc Besson’s Love-Struck Reinterpretation of the Timeless Gothic Tale is Ridiculous but Watchable
Maybe audiences aren’t clamoring for an updated adaptation of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro for stylish excess. Still, one must admit: 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 Robert Eggers’s recent, solemnly classy version of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, such as a scene that appears to show a territorial boundary between France and Romania.
The Veteran Actor as a Clever but Weary Vampire-Hunting Priest
Christoph Waltz plays a witty yet careworn man of the church pursuing the undead – it’s surprising he never took on such a part earlier – who arrives in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. Likewise present is the sinister Dracula, played by the expert in grotesque roles Caleb Landry Jones with a mangled central European accent evoking Steve Carell’s Gru from the Despicable Me comedies. It’s a role he seemed destined to play.
The Story: A Chronicle of Longing
The story is this: Dracula has wandered endlessly the globe in anguish over four centuries following his rise as one of the undead, a penalty for his irreligious grief following the loss of his wife, Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). Dracula has looked tirelessly for a female who might be the rebirth of his departed beloved. As ill fortune would have it, the chosen woman is revealed as Mina (also Bleu, of course), the modest betrothed of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who has recently been to Dracula’s fortress to negotiate his property portfolio and the tiny painting of the charming Mina drew the vampire’s attention.
Besson’s Direction and Comic Flair
Besson structures Dracula’s middle-section history of worldwide travels sporting extravagant attire with a sure hand, and he doesn’t shy away from offering funny bits reminiscent of Mel Brooks – such as the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to end his own life following Elisabeta’s passing, as well as farcical scenes that follow Dracula applies to himself using a particular scent during the 1700s in Florence, that renders him compelling to the opposite sex. Ridiculous and watchable.
Dracula is on digital platforms beginning on the first of December and in disc format from 22 December. It screens in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.
