French director Luc Besson’s English-language DRACULA transforms Bram Stoker’s gothic horror novel into a sort of fairy tale-like gothic romantic fantasy, about a 15th century prince cursed by God for renouncing him after the death of his beloved wife, who is doomed to an eternal life searching for his lost love. Besson, know for LA FEMME NIKITA and THE FIFTH ELEMENT, also wrote the screenplay for DRACULA and certainly knows how to create thriller entertainment. With a score by Danny Elfman and Christoph Waltz in a supporting role, the film is silly fun, although it has some unevenness in tone.
However, this Dracula tale is not for everyone, certainly not purists, and so some people are likely to hate it while others find it amusing. The original title, apparently, was DRACULA A LOVE STORY, so that’s a tip off. It mixes brooding gothic romance with action sequences and some bloody, while sprinkling in dark humor and references to other Dracula movies. It’s not particularly horror and, reportedly, it was created by Besson less out of a fascination with the Dracula novel and more out of a wish to work again with Caleb Landry Jones, with whom the director/writer worked in his 2023 film DOGMAN.
In 15th century Wallachia, in the Carpathian Mountains, Prince Vlad II (Caleb Landry Jones), also known as Count Dracula, is madly in love with his princess Elisabeta (Zoe Bleu), but is pulled away from their bedroom romps by the arrival of the Ottoman Turks on the border. Worried for the princess, he sends her off to another castle for safety but just to be sure, he threatens his bishop, to extract a guarantee: Since the prince is going to be God’s defender of the faith, then bishop must make God promise that his princess will not be killed.
The princess never makes it to the other castle and, heartbroken and enraged, denounces God. As a punishment, God condemns Vlad to eternal life, as a vampire. The rest of the film follows the grieving immortal prince across the centuries, as he searches for the reincarnation of his lost princess. His search takes him across centuries and to the royal courts of Europe (in a series of visually lush scenes) until he decides to send out minion vampires instead to search for this princess.
Besson does get around to including part of Bram Stoker’s novel, although things are turned on their head in this version. Four hundred years later after the death of Princess Elisabeta, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), a Parisian lawyer in this version, comes to visit Count Dracula in his decaying Romanian castle, with an offer to buy one of the Count’s real estate holdings. That visit is how Vlad spots a photo in a locket, of Harker’s fiancee Mina, who looks exactly like the princess. Locking up Harker, Vlad sets off for Victorian-era Paris.
This Dracula’s quest is for the lost Elisabeta rather than fresh victims, but still, a vampire’s gotta eat. He has to fuel up and restore his good looks before he meets her, but Vlad has found a clever way to ensure an endless supply of fresh blood, by creating an irresistible perfume that draws women to him. Silly stuff, of course, but delivered with a winking sense of fun.
In Paris, things get lively, with Matilda De Angelis chewing up some scenery among other things as Vlad’s servant vampire Maria. Maria is lock up in an asylum after attacking a priest, where she is tended by Dr. Dumont (Guillaume de Tonquedec) who calls in a specialist, a priest/detective (Christoph Waltz) from the Vatican, to solve the case. We also meet Maria’s unsuspecting nobleman fiance Henry Spencer (David Shields) and, of course, Mina (Zoe Bleu again).
Plenty of other vampire movies get referenced along the way, with a good measure of tongue in cheek. This certainly isn’t the first Dracula comedy, or even the first Dracula romance. Christoph Waltz is a standout, in a kind of van Helsing role as the droll, clever, unconventional priest/detective, who is called in to treat Maria, played by a very entertaining Matilda De Angelis.
Waltz gets plenty of scenes and provides a lot of the fun in this film, and gets the best lines, but Caleb Landry Jones as Prince Vlad is the star. This Dracula is less a figure of pure evil than a cursed, violent man filled with regrets and grief. Jones varies between grieving widower and a coolly clever vampire with penchant for swiftly violence. There are plenty of fight scenes, both sword battles and martial arts fights, as many as there are blood-sucking ones. There is some blood but less gore than you might expect.
Again, all pretty silly but entertaining, and Landry Jones often plays it with a winking smugness. His looks vary too, going from handsome medieval prince or Victorian hand-kisser to a crumbling pale thing in an enormous white wig. Caleb Landry Jones is a good choice for this part, as his looks are unconventional enough that he can play romantically handsome in some scenes or just weird-looking in others.
Although the film is in English, everyone sports some kind of accent, which often makes the dialog difficult to discern. Danny Elfman’s score adds a bit of fun, and reminds us not to get to serious here. While the film has nice costumes and sets, scenery is more variable, from some well-done, even beautiful CGI scenes but others using cheesy low-budget backdrops.
Luc Besson’s DRACULA is no Dracula classic. But, despite it’s flaws and silliness, it is kind of fun to watch, if you don’t take it seriously and can get past the violence it does to Bram Stoker’s novel.
DRACULA opens in theaters on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026.
RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars
