Dracula Review – The French Director’s Love-Struck Revamp of the Classic Horror Story is Ridiculous but Watchable

It’s possible audiences aren’t clamoring for an updated adaptation of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro for stylish excess. Still, it’s worth noting: his lavishly upholstered romantic vampire tale displays creativity and style – 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, like a particular moment that appears to show a geographic divide between France and Romania.

The Veteran Actor as a Humorously Exhausted Vampire-Hunting Priest

Christoph Waltz embodies a clever but beleaguered cleric fighting vampires – I can’t believe he hasn’t played this role before – who arrives in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. The same goes for the malevolent vampire count, played by the seasoned horror actor Caleb Landry Jones using a distorted Eastern European tone evoking Steve Carell’s Gru in the Despicable Me films. It’s a role he seemed destined to play.

The Narrative: A Chronicle of Longing

The plot unfolds as follows: the count has traveled ceaselessly the earth in anguish for hundreds of years following his rise as one of the undead, a punishment for his faithless sorrow over the death of his spouse Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). Dracula has sought relentlessly for a lady who could be the rebirth of his deceased partner. As ill fortune would have it, the lucky lady turns out to be Mina (again played by Bleu), the demure fiancee of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who just traveled to the count’s castle to review his property portfolio and the small picture of the winsome Mina attracted Dracula’s gaze.

Besson’s Handling and Lighthearted Touch

Besson organizes Dracula’s middle-section history of global roaming wearing flamboyant outfits skillfully, and he willingly includes providing humorous scenes with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – for example the count’s repeated and futile attempts to kill himself after Elisabeta’s death, in addition to absurd moments that occur when Dracula applies to himself using a particular scent in 18th-century Florence, which causes him to be irresistible to women. Outlandish but entertaining.

Dracula can be streamed online from 1 December and on DVD and Blu-ray from 22 December. It plays in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.