Dracula, worn as he is, continues to survive the light of day. Controversial director Luc Besson presents a run-of-the-mill take on horror’s most iconic monster — though his is less a horror film and more a fantasy romance, shadowed by predatory violence.
In medieval Romania, Prince Vlad II (Caleb Landry Jones) — otherwise known as Count Dracula — engages in a whirlwind romance with his wife, Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu), while religious warfare rages beyond. When an enemy soldier kills Elisabeta, Vlad renounces Christianity and murders a priest, a sin that turns him into a vampire. Convinced Elisabeta is alive, Dracula scours Europe for his beloved, turning noblewomen like Maria (Matilda De Angelis) into vampires to aid his search. As Dracula nears locating a reincarnated Elisabeta in 19th century Paris, a priest (Christoph Waltz) races to end him and free the women he bit once and for all.
The film carries Besson’s characteristic visual spectacle, similarly recognizable in one of his best known films, ‘The Fifth Element’ (1997). The set infuses Gothic imagery with neo-Baroque theatricality, where castles, shadows and (poorly rendered) gargoyles meet flamboyant circuses, ballrooms and pastels.
Makeup and costuming find their strengths in the aged Count. With his hard shriveled skin, ornamental waist-length hair and rich purple robes, Dracula is ancient, lavish and regal — a vampire at his core.
Standard tropes abound. Garlic and sunlight are vampires’ weaknesses, beheadings and wooden stakes are deadly, bloodsucking is erotic and aversion to religion is central. But unlike Robert Eggers’ ‘Nosferatu’ (2024), which leans into tropes to produce traditional horror, or Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ (2025), which spins them into innovative social commentaries, Besson’s terror runs dry. The film races through its acts, never lingering to allow tension or fear to build. The music is operatic and playful, never pulsing or sinister.
Instead of leaning into the horror of vampirism, Besson focuses on its romance: on a vampire’s endless search for his lost love across centuries. Even so, the romance begs interrogation. Dracula’s bite is not only positioned as sexual in the film, but as violent, penetrative, and in most cases, unwanted. It is difficult not to read Dracula’s bloodsucking of women as rape, and the film positions these moments as comical or romantic, never critical. The loss of women’s agency is a central component of the film that Besson — who married and impregnated a teenager in his 30s, and has been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct — leaves unquestioned.
Repentance seems to be the film’s ultimate message, but not for its insidious undercurrents about gender. Storytellers have used vampires to explore otherness, class divides, colonialism, forbidden sexuality and the boundary between what’s human and what’s monster; but here, the vampire is solely an apostate who can be saved only by returning to God. While ‘Dracula’ is clear in this message, it falls flat. To me, monster stories have always been more impactful when they’re about embracing monstrosity, not exorcising it.
