Dracula Review – Besson’s Love-Struck Revamp of the Classic Horror Story is Outlandish but Entertaining

It’s possible audiences aren’t clamoring for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for glossiness and bloat. However, one must admit: his lavishly upholstered love story with vampires has ambition and panache – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, it could be preferable to it to the recent, stately interpretation by Robert Eggers of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, including one shot that seems to depict a land border between France and Romania.

Waltz as a Witty Yet Careworn Vampire-Hunting Priest

Christoph Waltz embodies a clever but beleaguered man of the church pursuing the undead – it’s surprising he never took on such a part earlier – who arrives in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. So does the malevolent vampire count, brought to life by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones using a distorted Eastern European tone reminiscent of Steve Carell’s Gru from the Despicable Me comedies. It’s a role that he too was born to take on.

The Plot: A Tale of Love and Loss

Here’s the premise: Dracula has been restlessly roaming the earth in anguish for hundreds of years since he became undead, a penalty for his irreligious grief after the passing of his beloved Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, the offspring of Rosanna Arquette). Dracula has been searching, searching, searching for a female who could be the rebirth of his lost love. By cruel fate, the lucky lady proves to be Mina (also Bleu, of course), the reserved future wife of the count’s timid estate manager, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who lately visited to Dracula’s fortress to discuss his real estate holdings and the small picture of the winsome Mina drew the vampire’s attention.

Besson’s Handling and Humorous Style

Besson arranges Dracula’s second-act backstory of global roaming in various outrageous costumes confidently, and he willingly includes giving us humorous scenes reminiscent of Mel Brooks – for example Dracula’s ongoing failed efforts to kill himself following Elisabeta’s passing, along with farcical scenes that follow Dracula applies to himself with a specific fragrance during the 1700s in Florence, that renders him irresistible to women. Ridiculous and watchable.

Dracula is available digitally from 1 December and for physical purchase starting the twenty-second of December. It will be shown in Australian cinemas beginning on the fifth of February, 2026.