With Dracula, Luc Besson stakes his claim on the greatest vampire story ever told. Leaning hard on the “romance” angle, much of it plays like a remake of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula with sporadic infusions of French camp.
In a war-torn prologue, Prince Vlad (Caleb Landry Jones, Antiviral) loses his wife (Zoë Bleu, 2017’s The Institute) to enemy Turkish forces. Vlad’s so despondent, he renounces God by plunging the local cardinal’s scepter into the cardinal — thus becoming eternal, I guess? Origins don’t matter here; we know Dracula.
What really matters is four centuries later, a priest (Christoph Waltz, also in 2025’s Frankenstein) investigates the source of female vampires around Paris, while dandy realtor Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid, TV’s Andor) attempts to do business with the owner of a spooky castle. That would be Vlad, of course, looking every bit his age, complete with a Gary Oldman granny updo. And when Vlad meets Harker’s striking fiancée (also Bleu), the blood-spitting image of his late wife … well, you know the rest.
So why watch? Besson, of course. From the slickness of La Femme Nikita to the grit ofThe Professional and beyond, his films shine with lush, visual opulence, regardless of genre. Every detail matters, and when Vlad says, “This battle will be bloody, your eminence,” prior to donning animalistic armor, you know Besson will not cut a corner. His Dracula, like Coppola’s, is an all-out epic, but with squatty stone gargoyles as meal-serving henchmen, Waltz tussling with a beheaded maiden, and a dance number ensuing when Vlad applies the 19th-century version of Sex Panther cologne.
And then there’s Jones. His wispy, near-translucent ginger mustache and pasty white skin don’t exactly scream “irresistible,” yet turns out, his unique look and naturally unnerving presence make him excellent oddball casting. Leather britches, lanky frame and all, he’s the heroin-chic Drac. —Rod Lott