Dracula Movie Critique – The French Director’s Romantic Reimagining of the Gothic Classic is Absurd but Entertaining

Perhaps audiences aren’t clamoring for an updated adaptation of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for polished extravagance. However, it’s worth noting: his lavishly upholstered vampire romance boasts bold vision and flair – and amid its theatrical camp, I might just favor over Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. Odd details emerge, such as a scene that looks like it presents a land border between France and Romania.

The Veteran Actor as a Witty Yet Careworn Priest Tracking the Undead

Christoph Waltz plays a humorous yet burdened man of the church pursuing the undead – it’s surprising he never took on this character previously – who finds himself in Paris in 1889 for the French Revolution centenary celebrations. The same goes for the sinister Dracula, enacted by the seasoned horror actor Caleb Landry Jones with a mangled central European accent evoking Steve Carell’s Gru in the Despicable Me films. This is a part that he too was born to take on.

The Story: A Tale of Love and Loss

The plot unfolds as follows: the count has wandered endlessly the earth in torment for 400 years since he became undead, a punishment for his faithless sorrow following the loss of his wife, Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, the offspring of Rosanna Arquette). Dracula has been searching, searching, searching for some woman who might 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 the count’s timid estate manager, Jonathan Harker (played by Ewens Abid), who lately visited to the vampire’s estate to discuss his property portfolio and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.

Besson’s Handling and Comic Flair

Besson arranges Dracula’s second-act backstory of global roaming sporting extravagant attire with a sure hand, and he willingly includes giving us humorous scenes with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – like the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to kill himself following Elisabeta’s passing, along with absurd moments that occur when Dracula sprays himself with a specific fragrance in historic Florence, which makes him compelling to the opposite sex. Absurd yet engaging.

Dracula can be streamed online from 1 December and on DVD and Blu-ray starting the twenty-second of December. It plays in Australian cinemas starting February 5, 2026.