Dracula Review – The French Director’s Passionate Reimagining of the Classic Horror Story is Ridiculous but Entertaining

It’s possible audiences aren’t clamoring for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for stylish excess. Still, it has to be said: his opulently crafted vampire romance has ambition and panache – 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 seems to depict a geographic divide between France and Romania.

Christoph Waltz as a Clever but Weary Clergyman Hunting Vampires

Christoph Waltz plays a humorous yet burdened cleric fighting vampires – it feels natural for him to tackle such a part earlier – who ends up in Paris in 1889 for the French Revolution centenary celebrations. The same goes for the malevolent vampire count, enacted by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect similar to the voice of Gru by Steve Carell from the Despicable Me comedies. It’s a role he seemed destined to play.

The Plot: A Saga of Heartbreak

The story is this: Dracula has been restlessly roaming the earth in sorrow for 400 years since he became undead, a penalty for his faithless sorrow after the passing of his beloved Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, daughter of Rosanna Arquette). Dracula has looked tirelessly for a lady who would be the rebirth of his deceased partner. By cruel fate, the chosen woman is revealed as Mina (again played by Bleu), the demure fiancee of the count’s timid estate manager, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), who lately visited to Dracula’s fortress to negotiate his property portfolio and the small picture of the lovely Mina drew the vampire’s attention.

The Filmmaker’s Approach and Humorous Style

Besson arranges Dracula’s second-act backstory of global roaming sporting extravagant attire with a sure hand, and he doesn’t shy away from providing funny bits with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – for example the count’s repeated and futile attempts to end his own life following Elisabeta’s passing, in addition to comical sequences that result after Dracula sprays himself with a specific fragrance in 18th-century Florence, that renders him unavoidably attractive to females. Outlandish but entertaining.

Dracula is on digital platforms beginning on the first of December and on DVD and Blu-ray from 22 December. It plays in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.