Thank the Lord Jesus, we have yet another Dracula movie! Sure, yes, it was just over a year ago that we were blessed with Robert Eggers’ ruthlessly stylish Nosferatu, a movie I put in my top 10 of 2024 even though I struggled through a rewatch shortly thereafter, but now we have a notably less flashy iteration upon which to feast. It’s only fitting too that the eternally creepy Caleb Landry Jones plays the title character—it’s a union made in hell.
Thankfully, this new Dracula blends old and new and diverges enough from the source material that you get whiffs of fresh blood. The core elements are there—a journey into Transylvania, Dracula’s fixation on a particular female, and a priest who vows to stop him, but otherwise director Luc Besson seems determined to not simply retell the story that has been churned over to endless death. In fact, he purposefully rushes through certain Dracula tropes to get to the differentiated stuff.
Besson delivers some memorable scenes and design choices, too. In one, Dracula enters a convent and rises into the air as every nun, consumed by his cologne, thrust themselves at him. A hot nun removes her veil, letting her beautiful hair flow freely—just before the blood does. In another, satisfyingly creepy gargoyles attack and imprison poor Jonathan Harker. The gargoyles are a unique touch.
All in all, Dracula is fast-paced and entertaining, but there’s a reason it’s being released through an upstart distributor, too. While Besson has made some creative films over the course of his long career, Dracula feels emotionally and visually flat—it doesn’t quite feel like the right subject matter fit for the filmmaker. Scene by scene there is a lot to like, but altogether the movie feels too bright, too straightforward, too conventionally constructed to bring this bloodsucking story to life in a rewarding way.
The humans—the good guys—are oddly lacking too. Jonathan (Ewins Abid) isn’t as central to the story as you’d expect, which is fine, but Christoph Waltz, playing a priest and to some degree the lead protagonist, fails to make much of a mark. He is oddly miscast, too, given that Besson plays things so straight and serious whereas Waltz is best when he can latch onto some eccentricities and quirkiness. Zoë Bleu is solid, but she too isn’t given as much to do as you’d expect.
Dracula really is Landry Jones’ show, and he plays a sublimely creepy Vlad throughout. Is it the most memorable or terror-inducing version of Dracula we’ve seen? No, and far from it, but for the type of movie this is, Landry Jones properly sinks his teeth into the role.
Dracula isn’t a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it has enough compelling moments to make it worth it for any bloodsucker fans out there.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.
