Latest Take on Dracula Legend Offers Sumptuous Spectacle but Scant Horror

In their 2010 book “Dracula in Visual Media,” authors John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan Picart point out that a new version of the iconic vampire appears every year, whether in film, television, comic books, video games, or another form of popular entertainment. While 2026 is still young, already we have a new movie version with the release of “Dracula,” a European production directed by French filmmaker Luc Besson and starring American actor Caleb Landry Jones as the titular, archetypal antihero. Disappointment awaits horror fans, though, for the movie draws its lifeblood not from frights and spooky atmospherics but from sumptuous spectacle, melodrama, a fair bit of silliness, and a hodgepodge of other sources beyond the original novel. One of the latter is the 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” which was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and featured Gary Oldman as the character. Indeed, from its focus on the “love story” aspects of the legend to elements of its set design, the latest film takes from Coppola’s as if it, too, were a vampire feasting on its celluloid ancestor. Though each new Draculean iteration looks to what came before it for inspiration and world-building, Mr. Besson, who also wrote the screenplay, flirts with creative theft. Yet one cannot easily replicate the movie magic Mr. Coppola crafted with an indelible central performance, old-school effects, and horror and romance motifs. And Mr. Besson is not the kind of storyteller to explore the poetic possibilities of light and shadow, modernity and myth, and rage and passion.So while the current movie also centers on Count Dracula hoping to find his lost love and appropriates certain scenes from the prior film, Mr. Besson adds digital effects, a couple of action scenes, and a soupçon of history and pageantry to mix things up a bit. The result makes for a messy, at times wacky and cheesy, though always watchable picture, one that won’t be remembered as a classic but has streaks of transgression and visual panache.Caleb Landry Jones in ‘Dracula.’ Via Vertical Entertainment After a 15th century prologue recalling Skinemax late night erotica, Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator,” and, of course, the 1992 Hollywood production, the film segues to the late 19th century. In Paris (instead of London), Van Helsing (Christoph Waltz) investigates a mysteriously crazed woman. And in Romania, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid) visits Dracula’s castle to discuss real estate, though soon he’s attacked by digital, Disney-like gargoyles instead of the novel’s three female vampires. In scenes as the hermetic protagonist with heavy old-age makeup, Mr. Jones conveys more world-weariness than menace, particularly when Jonathan buys some time before his demise by asking the count to tell him his life’s story. As Dracula recounts the 400 years since the death of his beloved Elisabeta, Mr. Besson indulges in a long flashback sequence, though this is one of the sections in which the movie differentiates itself from prior versions. The director integrates a bit of the Black Death; borrows from the novel and movie “Perfume;” links Dracula with Casanova; and even gives us a dance setpiece involving different aristocratic retinues, courtly styles, and eras. One of his sharpest observations sees him align vampires with decadent, money-sucking royalty.Though moderately engaging, the film’s expository first hour barely frightens or moves the plot along. This lends the dialogue a woodenness, with some of Mr. Besson’s changes and additions to the lore alternately requiring explanation and making little sense. Not even Mr. Waltz, with his trademark wry voice and looks, can turn lines about science and religion into animated pronouncements, even if his character is now both a doctor and a man of God. Upon realizing that Jonathan’s fiancee, Mina, looks just like his deceased wife, Dracula leaves the castle, and the film finally thrusts forward. A scene in a convent as he seeks fresh blood to become younger looking turns into an orgiastic, outrageously blasphemous high point. The kinkiness extends to other scenes, particularly ones involving Van Helsing’s patient, Maria, named Lucy in the book and played by Matilda De Angelis with gusto. With a tale as tied to sexual subversion as “Dracula,” Mr. Besson doesn’t skimp on sensuality and suggestiveness, even if he eschews much of the story’s darkness.While few moviegoers’ idea of a sexy leading man, Mr. Jones does seduce in the vampiric role. Similar to Mr. Oldman’s portrayal, the Texas-born actor sports an Eastern European accent and long hair, though he appears more approachable than the English thespian, despite having “basilisk” eyes as author Bram Stoker described. Overall, Mr. Jones acquits himself handsomely, and his scenes with actress Zoë Bleu as Mina/Elisabeta exude frissons of sexual tension if not exactly chemistry.Moments of humor and gaiety, such as one at a Parisian funfair, help to lighten what is essentially a narrative of grief. Mr. Besson’s Dracula is cursed with misery and melancholy until he reconnects with his true love, and this creates a film that comes off too sedate and sentimental at times. Still, as it ends back in Transylvania, the director includes cannons, swordplay, karate moves, and more for a big climax. It all adds up to an unsteady, impure reimagining, and yet appropriately infuses a few drops of new blood into the legend of Vlad the Impaler.

Latest Take on Dracula Legend Offers Sumptuous Spectacle but Scant Horror

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