Dracula Review – The French Director’s Passionate Revamp of the Gothic Classic is Outlandish but Watchable

Maybe audiences aren’t clamoring for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for glossiness and bloat. Still, it’s worth noting: his lavishly upholstered vampire romance displays creativity and style – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, it could be preferable compared with Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, like a particular moment that looks like it presents a territorial boundary between France and Romania.

Christoph Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Vampire-Hunting Priest

Christoph Waltz plays a clever but beleaguered cleric fighting vampires – I can’t believe he hasn’t played this character previously – who finds himself in Paris in 1889 for the French Revolution centenary celebrations. So does the sinister Dracula, enacted by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect reminiscent of Steve Carell’s Gru of the Despicable Me series. It’s a role he seemed destined to play.

The Story: A Saga of Heartbreak

Here’s the premise: the count has wandered endlessly the globe in anguish for hundreds of years after his transformation into a vampire, a punishment due to his blasphemous mourning following the loss of his beloved Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, the offspring of Rosanna Arquette). the vampire has sought relentlessly for a female who could be the return of his departed beloved. As ill fortune would have it, the fortunate female turns out to be Mina (again played by Bleu), the modest betrothed of the count’s timid estate manager, Jonathan Harker (enacted by Ewens Abid), who has recently been to the count’s castle to negotiate his real estate holdings and the tiny painting of the lovely Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.

The Filmmaker’s Approach and Lighthearted Touch

Besson structures Dracula’s flashback sequence of international journeys sporting extravagant attire with a sure hand, and he willingly includes providing some comedy moments with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – for example the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to kill himself following Elisabeta’s passing, as well as farcical scenes that follow Dracula sprays himself using a particular scent in 18th-century Florence, which makes him unavoidably attractive to females. Ridiculous and watchable.

Dracula is on digital platforms starting December 1st and for physical purchase starting the twenty-second of December. It will be shown in Australian cinemas starting February 5, 2026.