Dracula Review – Luc Besson’s Romantic Revamp of the Classic Horror Story is Ridiculous but Entertaining

Maybe audiences aren’t clamoring for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro for stylish excess. And yet, one must admit: his richly designed love story with vampires boasts bold vision and flair – and with its B-movie charm, I might just favor to it to Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, including one shot that looks like it presents a land border between France and Romania.

Christoph Waltz as a Witty Yet Careworn Clergyman Hunting Vampires

Christoph Waltz plays a humorous yet burdened man of the church pursuing the undead – I can’t believe he hasn’t played this role before – who arrives in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. Likewise present is the malevolent vampire count, enacted by the seasoned horror actor Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect similar to Carell’s Gru character of the Despicable Me series. This is a part that he too was born to take on.

The Story: A Chronicle of Longing

The plot unfolds as follows: Dracula has traveled ceaselessly the world in anguish for hundreds of years since he became undead, a consequence due to his blasphemous mourning following the loss of his beloved Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, the offspring of Rosanna Arquette). The count has sought relentlessly for a female who might be the return of his departed beloved. Unfortunately, the chosen woman proves to be Mina (also Bleu, of course), the demure fiancee of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who lately visited to the vampire’s estate to review his land assets and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina attracted Dracula’s gaze.

The Filmmaker’s Approach and Comic Flair

Besson arranges Dracula’s flashback sequence of worldwide travels wearing flamboyant outfits with a sure hand, and he doesn’t shy away from offering humorous scenes in the style of Mel Brooks – like Dracula’s ongoing failed efforts to end his own life post-Elisabeta’s demise, in addition to farcical scenes that occur when Dracula douses himself in a certain perfume during the 1700s in Florence, which makes him compelling to the opposite sex. Ridiculous and watchable.

Dracula is on digital platforms beginning on the first of December and in disc format starting the twenty-second of December. It will be shown in Australian cinemas beginning on the fifth of February, 2026.