Dracula Movie Critique – Luc Besson’s Romantic Revamp of the Gothic Classic is Absurd but Watchable

Maybe there is no great enthusiasm for a fresh take of Dracula from Luc Besson, the filmmaker known for glossiness and bloat. And yet, it’s worth noting: his lavishly upholstered love story with vampires has ambition and panache – and with its B-movie charm, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer compared with Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, such as a scene that looks like it presents a territorial boundary between France and Romania.

Waltz as a Clever but Weary Priest Tracking the Undead

Christoph Waltz plays a clever but beleaguered cleric fighting vampires – it’s surprising he never took on this role before – who ends up in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. The same goes for the sinister Dracula, played by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect reminiscent of the voice of Gru by Steve Carell in the Despicable Me films. This is a part that he too was born to take on.

The Narrative: A Chronicle of Longing

The story is this: Dracula has traveled ceaselessly the globe in anguish for 400 years following his rise as one of the undead, a consequence for his irreligious grief over the death of his spouse Elisabeta (an inaugural screen appearance for Zoë Bleu, daughter of Rosanna Arquette). The count has been searching, searching, searching for a female who might be the reincarnation of his departed beloved. Unfortunately, the lucky lady proves to be Mina (also Bleu, of course), the demure fiancee of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (enacted by Ewens Abid), who lately visited to the vampire’s estate to review his land assets and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.

The Filmmaker’s Approach and Comic Flair

Besson arranges Dracula’s flashback sequence of global roaming in various outrageous costumes skillfully, and he is not above giving us funny bits in the style of Mel Brooks – for example the count’s repeated and futile attempts to commit suicide post-Elisabeta’s demise, as well as farcical scenes that follow Dracula douses himself with a specific fragrance during the 1700s in Florence, which causes him to be unavoidably attractive to females. Absurd yet engaging.

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.