His name has been whispered on the winds for years unknown, inspiring dread in those who feel its creeping power in their bones. Travelling the seas from his European homeland, his conquests of lust and violence have been writ into legend. And now, as 2025 draws to a dark close, his return has come: that’s right, Luc Besson is back. The troubled work and professional career of the stylish Gallic director has seen an increasing retreat to his home territory, working with smaller budgets and less production supervisions after helming the most expensive independent bomb of all time, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Recently, his strange and shaggy character drama Dogman saw him find a new muse in Caleb Landry Jones, the indie darling whose instantly recognisable pale and striking features have landed him many a pasty-faced villain role over the years. Yet he had never played a vampire; sure, there was a desire to become one in Neil Jordan’s Byzantium, but he never quite got there. Now, from Besson’s burning desire to let Jones off the Dogman leash and showcase the distinctive actor’s spin on the most famous bloodsucker of all, Jones gets the chance to play Dracula himself in a Love Tale version of Bram Stoker’s classic that is alternatingly highly derivative and surprisingly unique, often from scene to scene.
The set-up is slavishly familiar: lovelorn Prince Vladimir of Wallachia’s 15th century crusade against the Islamic threat of the Ottoman Empire sees cruel circumstance rob him of his beautiful bride, Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu), causing him to violently denounce God and afflicting him with the worst fate of all: living forever. Besson starts to add his own touches in flashing forward to 19th century Paris, a wandering priest (Christoph Waltz in an unnamed role very clearly intended to be Dr. Van Helsing) uncovers a case of rabid vampirism in wealthy lady Maria (Matilda De Angelis) and soon discovers a centuries-old web of conspiracy leading back to an almost reptilian Count Dracula, the former prince and loverboy who is on a desperate quest to be eternally united with his reincarnated wife.
Dracula scholars of the page and screen may (very rightfully) be put off by the prologue that seems to unashamedly rip off Coppola’s 1992 version, complete with passionate, sloppy snogging, rouged horizons after gory battles and crosses gushing blood. If it weren’t for Dracula being the most adapted character of all time, there might be grounds for a lawsuit between directors here. Besson’s choice to portray the decrepit count in his nearly half-millenia-old form as a white-faced, wrinkled man in a red silken robe and double-bouffant hair style, a costume choice that makes Jones’ apeing of Gary Oldman’s performance even more depressingly obvious and pat. Granted, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu may have already announced itself as the reverential force to be reckoned with this year, yet the way in which huge chunks of Besson’s effort directly retread the ground of those who came before him really sets this adaptation off on the wrong foot.
Besson wildly lurches in between riffing on everyone from Mills & Boon to Ken Russell, creating an inconsistent if not begrudgingly entertaining rewriting of a classical figure who has ranged from grotesque to gorgeous
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Once the story reaches Paris, Besson begins to reshuffle the lore to better effect. Leading with Waltz’s man of the cloth is a smart move; in introducing its Van Helsing stand-in early, it also adds a much-needed injection of charisma to the proceedings. Waltz as Van Helsing is arguably one of the best matches of actor and material in a long time, sardonically chewing on innuendo-heavy, unserious dialogue as he schools medical professionals on their blind spots when it comes to bloodsuckers and deadpanning his way to slay his foe. Waltz may have turned in a fine supporting performance in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, yet another sumptuous and sweeping adaptation of a beloved gothic text, but it’s here he shines most.
Back at Castle Dracula, hapless Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid) is treated to a fresh backstory for Dracula, whose post-turn torments led him to multiple suicide attempts and a gap year (or, rather, century) travelling the globe for the finest love potions known to man in a montage that lets Landry Jones try on a full costume department’s worth of daft wigs and ruffs. This shifts the tone from Bram Stoker to Bridgerton, becoming far more of a silly bodice-ripper than the macabre, epic tone normally afforded to a Dracula narrative, before shifting back to a truly nutso sequence of dozens of enchanted, horny nuns forming a human pyramid for the cursed count to consume. Besson wildly lurches in between riffing on everyone from Mills & Boon to Ken Russell, creating an inconsistent if not begrudgingly entertaining rewriting of a classical figure who has ranged from grotesque to gorgeous; it’s just a bit much that Besson goes for everything in between.
Rising from the grave and shuffling into the party after Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu isn’t quite the stake-through-the-sternum that Besson could have fallen foul of, yet there’s the gnawing sense that it may have failed to sink its teeth into audiences with or without its twin brother. Besson may be working with wealth in his home country once again, and the money is undeniably on the screen; lots of the location work here is stunning, and the costumes are expectedly to die for. He just never fully finds a raison d’être for his take on Stoker to be more than a passing curiosity, an intrigue ever so slightly deepened by the off-kilter presence of his new muse figure found in Landry Jones. Through its wildly uneven tone and structure working against its decidedly romantic vision, it rarely (if ever) gets the blood pumping.
DRACULA: A LOVE TALE PLAYED SOHO HORROR AND IS AVAILABLE ON SIGNATURE ENTERTAINMENT BLU RAY FROM 22ND DECEMBER
