Dracula Film Analysis – Luc Besson’s Passionate Revamp of the Classic Horror Story is Absurd but Watchable
Maybe there is no great enthusiasm for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the celebrated French director for stylish excess. And yet, it’s worth noting: his richly designed love story with vampires has ambition and panache – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, I might just favor to it to Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, including one shot that seems to depict a geographic divide between France and Romania.
Waltz as a Clever but Weary Clergyman Hunting Vampires
Christoph Waltz embodies a humorous yet burdened man of the church pursuing the undead – I can’t believe he hasn’t played this role before – who ends up in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. The same goes for the sinister Dracula, played by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones using a distorted Eastern European tone similar to Carell’s Gru character in the Despicable Me films. It’s a role he seemed destined to play.
The Narrative: A Chronicle of Longing
The plot unfolds as follows: the vampire lord has traveled ceaselessly the earth in anguish for hundreds of years after his transformation into a vampire, a consequence for his faithless sorrow following the loss of his beloved Elisabeta (a movie debut role for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). The count has sought relentlessly for some woman who might be the rebirth of his deceased partner. As ill fortune would have it, the chosen woman turns out to be Mina (again played by Bleu), the modest betrothed of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (enacted by Ewens Abid), who has recently been to the vampire’s estate to negotiate his property portfolio and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina attracted Dracula’s gaze.
The Filmmaker’s Approach and Humorous Style
Besson structures Dracula’s middle-section history of international journeys in various outrageous costumes skillfully, and he is not above giving us some comedy moments reminiscent of Mel Brooks – like Dracula’s ongoing failed efforts to end his own life following Elisabeta’s passing, along with farcical scenes that follow Dracula sprays himself with a specific fragrance in 18th-century Florence, which causes him to be irresistible to women. Absurd yet engaging.
Dracula is on digital platforms starting December 1st and on DVD and Blu-ray starting the twenty-second of December. It screens in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.
