Dracula: A Love Tale | The Deight Night Review
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| Dracula: A Love Tale (2025, Luc Besson, Signature Entertainment) |
Not even giving Robert Eggers' groundbreaking Nosferatu remake even a year to rest on its laurels, Luc Besson - the legendary director behind Leon: The Professional and The Fifth Element - has released his own (certainly lighter) version of Bram Stoker's classic gothic tale, Dracula, in the form of Dracula: A Love Tale. This version sees the infamous Prince Vlad II of Wallachia, otherwise known as Count Dracula, (Caleb Landry Jones) gain his dark powers through cursing God for separating him from his true love, Elizabeta (Zoe Bleu Sidel), after she's killed in an ambush by the Prince's enemies, The Ottomans, during a battle to defend his castle. Cursed with eternal life after denying his soul to God until he's reunited with his beloved, Dracula hunts for centuries to find his true love reincarnated until he finally finds her in 19th Century Paris. However, in order to be with her, he must avoid the detection of a mysterious Priest (Christoph Waltz), who's aided in his own hunt by an old "guest" of Dracula's, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid).
Bram Stoker's Dracula has to be up there with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol in terms of the sheer amount of screen adaptations its had since the invention of the film camera. However, unlike many of the takes of the latter Christmas classic, adaptors of Dracula always seem to be able to find new ways to change the story to make it feel like their own. This isn't always successful, of course (see Steven Moffatt's recent BBC Miniseries as a recent example), but it's always more interesting than seeing a different old white actor get increasingly more startled by the same four ghosts. Luc Besson's Dracula: A Love Tale certainly takes a few of its cues from Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation, especially with his design of the blood starved Count, but also in terms of its more campy tone that doesn't distract from the innate darkness and gothic atmosphere that's traditional to the story. Where it starts to carve its own path though is several intriguing elements of its story, which delve much deeper into the origins of the classic vampire than most other adaptations (except of course, Dracula Untold), as well as giving Dracula a more empathetic motivation.
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| Dracula: A Love Tale (2025, Luc Besson, Signature Entertainment) |
In classic Besson form, his adaptation is somewhat more action oriented. The film opens with a rather epic battle sequence set in 15th Century Romania and fittingly also ends with a similarly impressive battle set in the completely different 19th Century, changing the fighting from swords and shields to flintlock rifles and cannons. The changing of historical settings does add a unique element to the story, while vampire films often take place in the past (eg. Sinners, Nosferatu), the creatures' immortality is rarely taken advantage of from a narrative perspective. Delving further into Dracula's backstory here takes audiences through the middle ages, the Renaissance, the Regency era and of course, the 19th Century - which is admittedly where most of the film takes place. With this, there's such a wide variety of sets the film visits and gives such a unique look compared to the usual gothic affair of the standard story.
Many parts of Dracula: A Love Tale reveal that its budget wasn't as limitless as the likes of Robert Eggars'. It's clear many of the sets are entirely virtual and the cinematography and music don't really have much of a personality outside of serving their basic purpose of illustrating a gothic story such as this (Danny Elfman not going far from his usual remit). However, the lower budget has clearly given an opportunity to an actor like Caleb Landry Jones to earn a rare leading role. It's a good thing too because Jones was clearly born to play the Count. Every scene he plays with an evil grin and a gloriously hammy Eastern European accent that reveals just how much fun he's having playing the classic horror villain. Jones steals every scene he's in and makes Dracula nefarious and cunning but also tragic and empathetic. Besson's Dracula has one of the hardest lives of any previous Dracula and it's difficult sometimes not to root for the villain. Though when you consider the story's traditional protagonist, Jonathan Harker, is barely given any personality and purpose outside of a framing device for Prince Vlad's origin, it's maybe not so much of a surprise that Dracula himself is comparatively more compelling.
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| Dracula: A Love Tale (2025, Luc Besson, Signature Entertainment) |
Being the cast's biggest star, Christoph Waltz is obviously one of the film's highlights. While he's not playing too far away from his Oscar winning performance from Django Unchained, he's still the endlessly watchable actor that film fans have missed for the many years of his recently ended absence. His character is a Bavarian Priest that's not credited with a name and he leaves the screen just as mysteriously as he enters it and adding to his enigma is his almost encyclopedic knowledge of vampires. Putting all this aside though, it's clear to anyone even vaguely familiar to the story of Bram Stoker's novel that this is Professor Van Helsing and it's a wonder why the character wasn't named as such. Given the more religious theming of Dracula: A Love Tale, it makes sense for Dracula's nemesis to be a Christian figure, but to not use the iconic names seems needlessly avoidant.
While Besson's Dracula: A Love Tale isn't the artistic masterpiece of Robert Eggers' perfect Nosferatu it still provides a unique and entertaining new version of the countlessly retold story of Count Dracula. The cast, led by the supremely talented Caleb Landry Jones, and crew clearly had endless fun bringing this far campier, more fantastical and action packed take on the gothic icon and as a result produce one of the year's most intriguing and entertaining horrors.
★★★★
