Dracula Movie Critique – Besson’s Love-Struck Revamp of the Classic Horror Story is Outlandish but Engaging

Perhaps audiences aren’t clamoring for a fresh take of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for glossiness and bloat. However, it has to be said: his lavishly upholstered love story with vampires displays creativity and style – and with its B-movie charm, I might just favor to it to the recent, stately interpretation by Robert Eggers of Nosferatu. A few strange elements appear, including one shot that looks like it presents a territorial boundary between France and Romania.

Christoph Waltz as a Clever but Weary Vampire-Hunting Priest

Christoph Waltz plays a clever but beleaguered cleric fighting vampires – it’s surprising he never took on such a part earlier – who ends up in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. So does the sinister Dracula, enacted by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones using a distorted Eastern European tone evoking the voice of Gru by Steve Carell in the Despicable Me films. This character suits him perfectly.

The Plot: A Saga of Heartbreak

The story is this: the vampire lord has wandered endlessly the earth in torment for 400 years since he became undead, a punishment for his irreligious grief over the death of his wife, Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, daughter of Rosanna Arquette). The count has been searching, searching, searching for a lady who might be the return of his deceased partner. As ill fortune would have it, the lucky lady turns out to be Mina (portrayed once more by Bleu), the reserved future wife of the count’s timid estate manager, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), who has recently been to the count’s castle to review his real estate holdings and the tiny painting of the winsome Mina attracted Dracula’s gaze.

Besson’s Direction and Comic Flair

Besson arranges Dracula’s flashback sequence of worldwide travels in various outrageous costumes confidently, and he is not above providing humorous scenes with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – for example Dracula’s ongoing failed efforts to kill himself post-Elisabeta’s demise, as well as farcical scenes that occur when Dracula douses himself with a specific fragrance during the 1700s in Florence, that renders him irresistible to women. Absurd yet engaging.

Dracula can be streamed online starting December 1st and for physical purchase from 22 December. It screens in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.