Dracula Review – Luc Besson’s Love-Struck Reinterpretation of the Timeless Gothic Tale is Absurd but Watchable

Maybe audiences aren’t clamoring for an updated adaptation of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro for glossiness and bloat. And yet, it has to be said: his richly designed vampire romance displays creativity and style – and amid its theatrical camp, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer to it to Robert Eggers’s recent, solemnly classy version of Nosferatu. Odd details emerge, such as a scene that seems to depict a geographic divide between France and Romania.

Christoph Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Vampire-Hunting Priest

Christoph Waltz embodies a witty yet careworn cleric fighting vampires – it feels natural for him to tackle such a part earlier – who arrives in Paris in 1889 to mark the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. The same goes for the malevolent vampire count, played by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones with a mangled central European accent evoking Steve Carell’s Gru in the Despicable Me films. It’s a role that he too was born to take on.

The Story: A Chronicle of Longing

The plot unfolds as follows: the count has been restlessly roaming the earth in anguish for 400 years following his rise as one of the undead, a penalty for his irreligious grief over the death of his beloved Elisabeta (an inaugural screen appearance for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). the vampire has been searching, searching, searching for a female who would be the reincarnation of his lost love. By cruel fate, the chosen woman is revealed as Mina (also Bleu, of course), the demure fiancee of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (enacted by Ewens Abid), who just traveled to Dracula’s fortress to review his land assets and the tiny painting of the lovely Mina drew the vampire’s attention.

Besson’s Handling and Humorous Style

Besson arranges Dracula’s middle-section history of worldwide travels wearing flamboyant outfits skillfully, and he is not above providing some comedy moments reminiscent of Mel Brooks – like the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to end his own life post-Elisabeta’s demise, as well as absurd moments that occur when Dracula sprays himself in a certain perfume in 18th-century Florence, which causes him to be compelling to the opposite sex. Absurd yet engaging.

Dracula is on digital platforms beginning on the first of December and on DVD and Blu-ray from 22 December. It plays in Australian cinemas beginning on the fifth of February, 2026.