Luc Besson and Caleb Landry Jones teamed up for a dumb Dracula

Besson is actually in his not-that-impressionable mid-60s, but an adolescent impulse has run through much of his work over the years, including (and maybe especially) in his best-loved movies, like The Professional, Lucy, and The Fifth Element. In the latter, a seemingly average guy in a futuristic city saves the world (universe?) alongside a waifish-yet-badass Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), who remains one of cinema’s great discomfiting fantasy objects. Rather than downplaying that part of his fantasy, Besson reaches further: Leeloo turns out to be the actual physical embodiment of love.

Dracula opens with similarly grandiose gestures. Like the Coppola film, Besson’s movie declares more explicitly than Stoker’s novel that Count Dracula is actually real-life warrior-prince Vlad the Impaler, whose name (“Vlad Dracula”) inspired Stoker. In both Coppola and Besson’s tellings, Vlad renounces God and embraces vampirism following his wife’s death. In Besson’s version, Prince Vladimir (Caleb Landry Jones) is even more dedicated to his beloved Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) than to impaling his rivals; after a montage of the couple pawing at each other and smearing each other with porridge, fellow soldiers must literally peel Vladimir away from his beloved to lead his men in battle.

They notch a triumphant victory, but Vlad’s enemies still come for Elisabeta, who dies in the scuffle when he rides to her rescue. The key difference from the Coppola version — we are already quite far afield from Stoker — is that Elisabeta’s death is partially Vladimir’s fault; he hurls a spear with such force that he impales both his enemy and his love. After killing a priest for failing to keep them both safe through prayer as ordered, Vladimir then renounces God entirely. In the hands of Jones and Besson, this Dracula is… kind of a dumb-ass.

As in both the book and Coppola’s film, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid) arrives at Castle Dracula centuries later for a real-estate transaction, finding a bizarre, elderly man with a musty, elaborate updo. (Yes, Besson even sees fit to rip off — er, pay homage to — Gary Oldman’s iconic hair from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.) Learning that Harker’s fiancée Mina (also Bleu) closely resembles Elisabeta, Dracula sets off to find this possible reincarnation of his great love.

Besson’s main deviation from the Coppola film comes in this mid-section, as Harker engages Dracula in a spot of Interview with the Vampire, leading to a series of vignettes about Dracula’s attempts to locate Elisabeta over the years. This includes further evidence that Dracula will not be beating the dum-dum charges, such as when he digs up Elisabeta’s grave years after her passing, and seems shocked and dismayed to find that her body has in fact decayed.

But Besson also adds weird, entertaining inventions like a de facto dance number turned bloodbath, and the conversion of Mina’s best friend Lucy into Maria (Matilda De Angelis), a fully transformed, gleefully voracious vampire foot soldier. Also, presumably to prove his devotion to Mina, Dracula doesn’t stock his castle with sexy, menacing brides. Instead, his helpers are little stone gargoyle guys who have come to life.

Somewhere around the introduction of Dracula’s gargoyle minions, Besson’s Dracula becomes surprisingly difficult to resist, at least if you’re able to access a certain immature mindset. Some viewers may take a pass on that process. More seriously, they may decline to watch movies directed by a man accused, in court and less formally, of sexual misconduct. (A French court acquitted him of rape in 2023.) It’s especially noticeable how much romantic sympathy Besson affords a monster-man killing people (including many women) throughout the ages in pursuit of true love. That element is even more pronounced in his film than in Coppola’s.

But Besson’s Dracula does accurately convey the irresistible pull of the monster romance. Dracula’s love for Elisabeta is intense, mopey, and solipsistic, causing him to throw bloody fits throughout the ages. It’s essentially a teenage crush from hell, even though they’re supposed to be husband and wife.

Image: Vertical Entertainment

Jones, who previously worked with Besson on the misguided but compelling 2023 misfit story Dogman (not the animated kids’ film; this one is more akin to Joker), can be a singularly off-putting presence. This movie was supposedly based more on Besson’s fascination with his star than a particular love for Dracula. Talking to Deadline about the film’s origins, Besson called his star’s talent “something I haven’t seen since Gary Oldman,” who he directed in The Fifth Element. Maybe it was the Oldman connection that caused Besson to crib so much imagery from Coppola’s opulent Oldman-starring version.

Jones does strike a workable balance between pitiable teenage yearning and more directly malformed, monstrous desires. There’s real soulfulness to the monster in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and the shadowy evil of the Robert Eggers take on Nosferatu is ornate and foreboding. The Caleb Landry Jones Dracula, by contrast, seems like he could write some truly awful romantic poetry or, if he lives long enough, cut a self-indulgent album.

And that’s the real value of Luc Besson’s Dracula: Following del Toro’s Oscar-nominated (and very entertaining) passion project and Eggers’ artistic triumph, it’s fun to see a classic monster story that’s not especially elevated. Besson has no particularly coherent thoughts about the humanity of monsters or monstrousness of humanity. He’s just made a stupidly sincere Gothic love story with some delightfully daft touches — a reminder that these monsters don’t have to be year-end awards contenders.

Image: Sony

Lots of monster fans are converted in youth, and this Dracula feels very much like something a teenager could fall in misguided love with, on their way to appreciating bigger swings at the same story, Coppola’s among them. Making this movie was not a particularly dignified use of a 66-year-old’s time — but then, Dracula isn’t exactly acting his age either, is he? In the movies, Dracula often fuses the passion of youth, the seductiveness of experience, and the fearsome grotesquerie of both; he’s an elderly teenager. Dracula gets that ridiculous vibe right.

Dracula is in theaters Feb. 6.