Dracula Movie Critique – The French Director’s Love-Struck Reimagining of the Timeless Gothic Tale is Absurd but Engaging

Maybe audiences aren’t clamoring for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro for glossiness and bloat. However, it’s worth noting: his opulently crafted vampire romance displays creativity and style – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, it could be preferable over Robert Eggers’s recent, solemnly classy version of Nosferatu. A few strange elements appear, such as a scene that looks like it presents a geographic divide between France and Romania.

Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Priest Tracking the Undead

Christoph Waltz portrays a humorous yet burdened vampire-hunting priest – I can’t believe he hasn’t played such a part earlier – who ends up in Paris in 1889 to mark the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. Likewise present is the sinister Dracula, played by the expert in grotesque roles 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 Chronicle of Longing

The story is this: the count has wandered endlessly the world in anguish for hundreds of years after his transformation into a vampire, a punishment for his irreligious grief following the loss of his spouse Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, daughter of Rosanna Arquette). The count has sought relentlessly for a female who might be the reincarnation of his deceased partner. Unfortunately, the chosen woman turns out to be Mina (also Bleu, of course), the demure fiancee of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who lately visited to Dracula’s fortress to review his land assets and whose miniature portrait of the lovely Mina drew the vampire’s attention.

The Filmmaker’s Approach and Lighthearted Touch

Besson structures Dracula’s middle-section history of global roaming sporting extravagant attire skillfully, and he doesn’t shy away from offering humorous scenes in the style of Mel Brooks – such as the count’s repeated and futile attempts to commit suicide after Elisabeta’s death, as well as absurd moments that follow Dracula applies to himself with a specific fragrance during the 1700s in Florence, which causes him to be irresistible to women. Outlandish but entertaining.

Dracula is available digitally from 1 December and in disc format starting the twenty-second of December. It screens in Australian cinemas beginning on the fifth of February, 2026.