Dracula Movie Critique – Besson’s Passionate Reinterpretation of the Gothic Classic is Outlandish but Entertaining
Perhaps audiences aren’t clamoring for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for polished extravagance. Still, it’s worth noting: his lavishly upholstered love story with vampires has ambition and panache – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, I might just favor compared with Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, including one shot that looks like it presents a territorial boundary between France and Romania.
Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Priest Tracking the Undead
Christoph Waltz plays a humorous yet burdened man of the church pursuing the undead – I can’t believe he hasn’t played this role before – who finds himself in Paris in 1889 for the French Revolution centenary celebrations. Likewise present is the sinister Dracula, enacted by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones with a mangled central European accent similar to Carell’s Gru character in the Despicable Me films. It’s a role suits him perfectly.
The Story: A Chronicle of Longing
The story is this: the vampire lord has wandered endlessly the earth in torment over four centuries following his rise as one of the undead, a punishment for his irreligious grief after the passing of his wife, Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). The count has sought relentlessly for a female who could be the reincarnation of his departed beloved. By cruel fate, the chosen woman is revealed as Mina (again played by Bleu), the modest betrothed of Dracula’s feeble property handler, Jonathan Harker (enacted by Ewens Abid), who just traveled to Dracula’s fortress to negotiate his land assets and the small picture of the winsome Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.
The Filmmaker’s Approach and Humorous Style
Besson structures Dracula’s middle-section history of international journeys sporting extravagant attire with a sure hand, and he willingly includes providing humorous scenes with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – for example the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to end his own life following Elisabeta’s passing, in addition to absurd moments that occur when Dracula douses himself in a certain perfume in 18th-century Florence, which causes him to be irresistible to women. Absurd yet engaging.
Dracula is available digitally starting December 1st and on DVD and Blu-ray starting the twenty-second of December. It will be shown in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.
