Dracula Review – The French Director’s Love-Struck Reimagining of the Gothic Classic is Absurd but Entertaining

Maybe interest is limited for a fresh take of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for stylish excess. Still, one must admit: his lavishly upholstered love story with vampires boasts bold vision and flair – and amid its theatrical camp, it could be preferable compared with Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, including one shot that appears to show a land border between France and Romania.

The Veteran Actor as a Witty Yet Careworn Priest Tracking the Undead

Christoph Waltz embodies a clever but beleaguered man of the church pursuing the undead – it’s surprising he never took on this character previously – who arrives 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 the voice of Gru by Steve Carell from the Despicable Me comedies. It’s a role that he too was born to take on.

The Narrative: A Chronicle of Longing

Here’s the premise: Dracula has traveled ceaselessly the globe in torment for hundreds of years since he became undead, a consequence for his faithless sorrow after the passing of his spouse Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, the offspring of Rosanna Arquette). Dracula has been searching, searching, searching for a lady who might be the return of his departed beloved. Unfortunately, the fortunate female turns out to be Mina (also Bleu, of course), the demure fiancee of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who lately visited to Dracula’s fortress to negotiate his real estate holdings and the small picture of the charming Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.

The Filmmaker’s Approach and Humorous Style

Besson structures Dracula’s middle-section history of worldwide travels wearing flamboyant outfits with a sure hand, and he is not above providing humorous scenes in the style of Mel Brooks – like Dracula’s ongoing failed efforts to commit suicide post-Elisabeta’s demise, along with farcical scenes that follow Dracula applies to himself using a particular scent during the 1700s in Florence, which causes him to be compelling to the opposite sex. Ridiculous and watchable.

Dracula can be streamed online beginning on the first of December and in disc format starting the twenty-second of December. It plays in Australian cinemas beginning on the fifth of February, 2026.