Dracula Review – The French Director’s Passionate Reinterpretation of the Classic Horror Story is Outlandish but Watchable

Maybe audiences aren’t clamoring for a fresh take of Dracula from Luc Besson, the filmmaker known for glossiness and bloat. Still, it’s worth noting: his lavishly upholstered love story with vampires has ambition and panache – and with its B-movie charm, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer to it to the recent, stately interpretation by Robert Eggers of Nosferatu. Odd details emerge, such as a scene that looks like it presents a geographic divide between France and Romania.

The Veteran Actor as a Clever but Weary Clergyman Hunting Vampires

Christoph Waltz plays a clever but beleaguered cleric fighting vampires – I can’t believe he hasn’t played this character previously – who ends up in Paris in 1889 to mark the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. So does the evil Count Dracula, 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. This character that he too was born to take on.

The Story: A Chronicle of Longing

The story is this: the count has wandered endlessly the globe in sorrow for hundreds of years following his rise as one of the undead, a punishment due to his blasphemous mourning after the passing of his spouse Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, the offspring of Rosanna Arquette). Dracula has sought relentlessly for a female who could be the reincarnation of his deceased partner. Unfortunately, the lucky lady is revealed as Mina (again played by Bleu), the modest betrothed of the count’s timid estate manager, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who lately visited to the vampire’s estate to review his real estate holdings and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina drew the vampire’s attention.

The Filmmaker’s Approach and Comic Flair

Besson structures Dracula’s flashback sequence of international journeys sporting extravagant attire with a sure hand, and he willingly includes offering funny bits with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – for example the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to commit suicide post-Elisabeta’s demise, as well as farcical scenes that follow Dracula sprays himself in a certain perfume during the 1700s in Florence, which causes him to be compelling to the opposite sex. Absurd yet engaging.

Dracula is available digitally beginning on the first of December and on DVD and Blu-ray from December 22nd. It plays in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.