When a 15th-century prince renounces God after the devastating loss of his wife, he inherits an eternal curse: he becomes Dracula. Condemned to wander through the centuries, he defies fate and death itself, guided by a single hope: to be reunited with his lost love.
Somewhere between faithful adaptation, hilariously unfortunate costume choices, and unnecessary video game-like additions such as gargoyle henchmen (PS1 games sometimes had better graphics), lies screenwriter and director Luc Besson's version of Dracula (no, he shouldn't be allowed to make films for any country due to his controversial history both in front of and behind the camera, but alas, here we are with another French production that relocates some of the source material to Paris). This version offers an intermittently compelling take on the material, focusing on a crisis of faith, religious betrayal, and a more romanticized version of longing than usual.
Director: Luc Besson
Writers: Luc Besson, Bram Stoker
Stars: Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoë Bleu
At times, Dracula is in tune with Guillermo del Toro's unabashed fondness for monsters and the supernatural. There are also glimpses of an attempt to capture the aesthetic and energy of Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, but this interpretation falls short, as Luc Besson lacks much personality or even gratuitous violence (for a Dracula film with several sword fights, the blood is minimal, save for a cartoonish decapitation that comes out of nowhere), not to mention the inclusion of out-of-place, cartoonish elements like the aforementioned gargoyles, which add nothing.
The film only shines when operating in desperate romantic mode, with decent performances (Caleb Landry Jones, who is apparently now the filmmaker's muse—which begs the question of what he's doing with his acting career—has a forced accent that leans too heavily into Dracula caricature, though admittedly he nails the seductive, deceptive, and romantic aspects) and a religious emphasis heightened by the ever-peculiar Christoph Waltz as a vampire-hunting priest.
The story begins sometime in the 15th century, with Vlad the Impaler (Caleb Landry Jones) madly in love with his wife, Elizabeta (Zoë Bleu). His only prayer to God is that He guarantee her safety while he goes about massacring armies in His name. During a sizable battle (especially considering the budget limitations) and the siege of a castle, Vlad's beloved is endangered and dies just as he arrives to rescue her. From that day on, he not only renounces his faith but murders the priest who had blessed her, causing a wooden image of Jesus Christ to weep.
Four hundred years later, Vlad is still alive, seemingly cursed by God with eternal life for sacrilege and for having renounced his faith, condemned to never see Elizabeta again in the afterlife. As everyone knows, he is now a vampire who drinks blood to reverse his aging. This is where the film adopts some more traditional narrative elements, such as the arrival of John Harker (Ewens Abid) to discuss the sale of the property, whose wife, Mina (also played by Zoë Bleu), resembles his deceased beloved.
While they converse, flashbacks show fragments of Vlad's journey through the centuries in search of his wife's reincarnation. At one point, he bites the necks of one woman after another in an absurd scene where all the women around him either ignore what's happening or look on in horror, waiting their turn, as if they were video game characters with poor artificial intelligence. However, what truly ruins this part is that, in the present timeline, the makeup, costumes, and prosthetics applied to Dracula are impressive, but they give him an unintentionally comical, old-woman-like appearance. Other aspects of the costume and production design are quite solid, meaning the quality is inconsistent and unpredictable from one scene to the next.
However, the mere sight of Mina in John's locket rekindles his quest for love: violent towards anyone who stands in his way, yet steadfast in his chivalrous demeanor when he finally meets her, he uses telepathic powers to show her his past life and how much he loved Elizabeta. This third act is by far the strongest point of Luc Besson's Dracula, as it fully embraces tragic romanticism and the expression of a centuries-old yearning. There's even a well-choreographed sword fight at Dracula's castle in the Carpathians, along with a truly moving ending. It's a shame the film doesn't come alive until that point.
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