Dracula Movie Critique – The French Director’s Love-Struck Revamp of the Classic Horror Story is Absurd but Entertaining

Perhaps interest is limited for an updated adaptation of Dracula from Luc Besson, the filmmaker known for glossiness and bloat. However, it has to be said: his richly designed love story with vampires displays creativity and style – and amid its theatrical camp, I might just favor over Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, such as a scene that seems to depict a land border between France and Romania.

Waltz as a Clever but Weary Priest Tracking the Undead

Christoph Waltz plays a humorous yet burdened cleric fighting vampires – it feels natural for him to tackle this character previously – who finds himself in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. Likewise present is the sinister Dracula, played by the expert in grotesque roles Caleb Landry Jones using a distorted Eastern European tone reminiscent of Steve Carell’s Gru in the Despicable Me films. It’s a role suits him perfectly.

The Story: A Saga of Heartbreak

The story is this: the count has wandered endlessly the world in anguish over four centuries following his rise as one of the undead, a penalty due to his blasphemous mourning following the loss of his wife, Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, daughter of Rosanna Arquette). Dracula has sought relentlessly for a lady who would be the rebirth of his lost love. Unfortunately, the fortunate female turns out to be Mina (portrayed once more by Bleu), the reserved future wife of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), who lately visited to the vampire’s estate to negotiate his property portfolio and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.

The Filmmaker’s Approach and Humorous Style

Besson arranges Dracula’s middle-section history of worldwide travels sporting extravagant attire skillfully, and he willingly includes offering some comedy moments in the style of Mel Brooks – for example the count’s repeated and futile attempts to kill himself post-Elisabeta’s demise, in addition to comical sequences that follow Dracula douses himself in a certain perfume in 18th-century Florence, that renders him irresistible to women. Outlandish but entertaining.

Dracula can be streamed online from 1 December and on DVD and Blu-ray from December 22nd. It plays in Australian cinemas beginning on the fifth of February, 2026.