Dracula Film Analysis – Besson’s Romantic Revamp of the Timeless Gothic Tale is Absurd but Watchable

Perhaps audiences aren’t clamoring for a fresh take of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro for polished extravagance. Still, it has to be said: his lavishly upholstered romantic vampire tale has ambition and panache – and with its B-movie charm, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer to it to Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. Odd details emerge, including one shot that looks like it presents a territorial boundary between France and Romania.

Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Vampire-Hunting Priest

Christoph Waltz plays a clever but beleaguered cleric fighting vampires – 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. The same goes for the evil Count Dracula, played by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones with a mangled central European accent reminiscent of Carell’s Gru character of the Despicable Me series. This character suits him perfectly.

The Narrative: A Chronicle of Longing

The story is this: the vampire lord has wandered endlessly the globe in sorrow for hundreds of years following his rise as one of the undead, a consequence for his faithless sorrow 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 a lady who could be the rebirth of his departed beloved. As ill fortune would have it, the lucky lady is revealed as Mina (also Bleu, of course), the reserved future wife of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (enacted by Ewens Abid), who has recently been to Dracula’s fortress to discuss his land assets and the tiny painting of the charming Mina drew the vampire’s attention.

Besson’s Direction and Lighthearted Touch

Besson arranges Dracula’s middle-section history of international journeys in various outrageous costumes confidently, and he willingly includes providing funny bits with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – like Dracula’s ongoing failed efforts to kill himself after Elisabeta’s death, as well as farcical scenes that follow Dracula applies to himself using a particular scent during the 1700s in Florence, which causes him to be irresistible to women. Outlandish but entertaining.

Dracula is on digital platforms beginning on the first of December and in disc format starting the twenty-second of December. It plays in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.