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

It’s possible interest is limited for a fresh take of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for glossiness and bloat. Still, it has to be said: his richly designed vampire romance boasts bold vision and flair – 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, including one shot that looks like it presents a geographic divide between France and Romania.

Waltz as a Clever but Weary Priest Tracking the Undead

Christoph Waltz plays a witty yet careworn man of the church pursuing the undead – I can’t believe he hasn’t played such a part earlier – who finds himself 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 using a distorted Eastern European tone evoking Steve Carell’s Gru of the Despicable Me series. It’s a role that he too was born to take on.

The Story: A Tale of Love and Loss

Here’s the premise: the count has been restlessly roaming the globe in anguish for 400 years after his transformation into a vampire, a consequence for his irreligious grief following the loss of his wife, Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). Dracula has been searching, searching, searching for some woman who could be the return of his departed beloved. By cruel fate, the chosen woman turns out to be Mina (also Bleu, of course), the reserved future wife of the count’s timid estate manager, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who lately visited to the vampire’s estate to negotiate his real estate holdings and whose miniature portrait of the charming Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.

Besson’s Handling and Comic Flair

Besson arranges Dracula’s middle-section history of international journeys sporting extravagant attire with a sure hand, and he is not above offering some comedy moments in the style of Mel Brooks – like Dracula’s ongoing failed efforts to end his own life following Elisabeta’s passing, as well as absurd moments that occur when Dracula applies to himself with a specific fragrance during the 1700s in Florence, that renders him irresistible to women. Ridiculous and watchable.

Dracula is on digital platforms beginning on the first of December and in disc format from 22 December. It screens in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.