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

Perhaps audiences aren’t clamoring for an updated adaptation of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for glossiness and bloat. Still, it’s worth noting: his lavishly upholstered vampire romance has ambition and panache – and amid its theatrical camp, it could be preferable to it to the recent, stately interpretation by Robert Eggers of Nosferatu. A few strange elements appear, like a particular moment that seems to depict a land border between France and Romania.

Christoph Waltz as a Clever but Weary Priest Tracking the Undead

Christoph Waltz plays a witty yet careworn man of the church pursuing the undead – it feels natural for him to tackle this character previously – who ends up in Paris in 1889 for the French Revolution centenary celebrations. The same goes for the sinister Dracula, enacted by the expert in grotesque roles Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect evoking Carell’s Gru character from the Despicable Me comedies. It’s a role he seemed destined to play.

The Story: A Chronicle of Longing

The story is this: the vampire lord has wandered endlessly the earth in torment for 400 years after his transformation into a vampire, a consequence for his faithless sorrow following the loss of his spouse Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, daughter of Rosanna Arquette). The count has sought relentlessly for some woman who would be the reincarnation of his departed beloved. As ill fortune would have it, the lucky lady is revealed as Mina (also Bleu, of course), the modest betrothed of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who just traveled to the count’s castle to review his land assets and the small picture of the lovely Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.

Besson’s Handling and Humorous Style

Besson arranges Dracula’s second-act backstory of global roaming sporting extravagant attire with a sure hand, 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 result after Dracula douses himself with a specific fragrance in 18th-century Florence, that renders him irresistible to women. Ridiculous and watchable.

Dracula is available digitally from 1 December and for physical purchase from 22 December. It will be shown in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.