Dracula Movie Critique – The French Director’s Passionate Reimagining of the Gothic Classic is Absurd but Watchable
It’s possible audiences aren’t clamoring for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for stylish excess. However, one must admit: his lavishly upholstered love story with vampires displays creativity and style – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, I might just favor to it to Robert Eggers’s recent, solemnly classy version of Nosferatu. A few strange elements appear, such as a scene that seems to depict a geographic divide between France and Romania.
The Veteran Actor as a Witty Yet Careworn Clergyman Hunting Vampires
Christoph Waltz portrays a witty yet careworn cleric fighting vampires – it’s surprising he never took on this character previously – who ends up in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. The same goes for the malevolent vampire count, enacted by the seasoned horror actor Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect reminiscent of Steve Carell’s Gru in the Despicable Me films. This character that he too was born to take on.
The Narrative: A Chronicle of Longing
The plot unfolds as follows: the vampire lord has been restlessly roaming the world in sorrow over four centuries since he became undead, a penalty for his faithless sorrow after the passing of his spouse Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). Dracula has sought relentlessly for a lady who would be the return of his deceased partner. By cruel fate, the chosen woman proves to be Mina (also Bleu, of course), the demure fiancee of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who just traveled to the vampire’s estate to negotiate his property portfolio and whose miniature portrait of the charming Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.
Besson’s Direction and Lighthearted Touch
Besson structures Dracula’s middle-section history of global roaming sporting extravagant attire skillfully, and he is not above giving us funny bits with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – for example the count’s repeated and futile attempts to end his own life post-Elisabeta’s demise, in addition to farcical scenes that result after Dracula douses himself in a certain perfume in historic Florence, which makes him compelling to the opposite sex. Absurd yet engaging.
Dracula can be streamed online from 1 December and in disc format from 22 December. It screens in Australian cinemas starting February 5, 2026.
