Dracula Review – Besson’s Love-Struck Reinterpretation of the Timeless Gothic Tale is Ridiculous but Entertaining

It’s possible there is no great enthusiasm for a fresh take of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro for stylish excess. And yet, one must admit: his richly designed love story with vampires has ambition and panache – and with its B-movie charm, it could be preferable over Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, such as a scene that appears to show a territorial boundary between France and Romania.

Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Vampire-Hunting Priest

Christoph Waltz embodies a clever but beleaguered man of the church pursuing the undead – I can’t believe he hasn’t played such a part earlier – who ends up in Paris in 1889 for the French Revolution centenary celebrations. The same goes for the evil Count Dracula, brought to life by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect reminiscent of Steve Carell’s Gru of the Despicable Me series. It’s a role that he too was born to take on.

The Story: A Saga of Heartbreak

Here’s the premise: the vampire lord has been restlessly roaming the earth in sorrow for 400 years after his transformation into a vampire, a punishment for his irreligious grief over the death of his beloved Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). The count has been searching, searching, searching for a female who would be the rebirth of his departed beloved. As ill fortune would have it, the fortunate female turns out to be Mina (again played by Bleu), the demure fiancee of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (enacted by Ewens Abid), who has recently been to the count’s castle to review his real estate holdings and the small picture of the winsome Mina attracted Dracula’s gaze.

Besson’s Direction and Comic Flair

Besson structures Dracula’s middle-section history of international journeys sporting extravagant attire confidently, and he is not above offering humorous scenes with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – for example the count’s repeated and futile attempts to end his own life post-Elisabeta’s demise, in addition to absurd moments that follow Dracula applies to himself with a specific fragrance in 18th-century Florence, that renders him irresistible to women. Ridiculous and watchable.

Dracula is on digital platforms from 1 December and in disc format from 22 December. It screens in Australian cinemas starting February 5, 2026.