Dracula Film Analysis – Besson’s Romantic Reinterpretation 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 glossiness and bloat. And yet, one must admit: his richly designed love story with vampires displays creativity and style – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, it could be preferable over Eggers’s dignified recent take of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, like a particular moment that seems to depict a land border between France and Romania.
The Veteran Actor as a Witty Yet Careworn Priest Tracking the Undead
Christoph Waltz portrays a witty yet careworn vampire-hunting priest – I can’t believe he hasn’t played such a part earlier – who arrives in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. The same goes for the sinister Dracula, played by the seasoned horror actor Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect evoking Carell’s Gru character from the Despicable Me comedies. This character that he too was born to take on.
The Plot: A Chronicle of Longing
Here’s the premise: the count has wandered endlessly the earth in torment for 400 years following his rise as one of the undead, a penalty due to his blasphemous mourning after the passing of his wife, Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, daughter of Rosanna Arquette). Dracula has been searching, searching, searching for some woman who might be the return of his lost love. As ill fortune would have it, the lucky lady turns out to be Mina (again played by Bleu), the modest betrothed of Dracula’s wimpish land agent, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), who just traveled to Dracula’s fortress to negotiate his land assets and whose miniature portrait of the charming Mina caught the count’s hooded eye.
The Filmmaker’s Approach and Humorous Style
Besson arranges Dracula’s middle-section history of global roaming in various outrageous costumes with a sure hand, and he is not above providing funny bits with a distinctly Mel Brooks flavour – for example Dracula’s ongoing failed efforts to commit suicide after Elisabeta’s death, in addition to comical sequences that follow Dracula applies to himself using a particular scent in historic Florence, that renders him unavoidably attractive to females. Outlandish but entertaining.
Dracula is on digital platforms beginning on the first of December and for physical purchase starting the twenty-second of December. It will be shown in Australian cinemas beginning on the fifth of February, 2026.
