Dracula: A Love Story
2026
Directors: Luc Besson
Starring: Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoe Bleu, Matilda De Angelis, and more.
When a 15th-century prince denounces God after the loss of his wife he inherits an eternal curse: he becomes Dracula. Condemned to wander the centuries, he defies fate and death, guided by a single hope – to be reunited with his lost love.
Oh, the internet loves to complain, “Not another Dracula.” As if we haven’t all happily rewatched the same vampire seducing the same doomed heroine for over a century. But when a filmmaker brings a fresh pulse to old blood, I’ve got to be honest. I’m in.
On the heels of Nosferatu, which split audiences right down the crypt, Luc Besson steps into the coffin with Dracula (2025) and does something unexpectedly tender. It’s not a dust-caked retread or a purely horror-forward fever dream. It’s a lush, romantically charged gothic epic that leans into longing more than lunging and, surprisingly, it works.
At the center is Caleb Landry Jones as Vladimir II of Wallachia, portrayed less as a monster and more as a man embalmed in grief. His performance hums with quiet desperation, the kind that makes you believe immortality would feel less like power and more like punishment. Opposite him, Zoë Bleu gives Elisabeta, later reborn as Mina, a grounded intelligence that keeps the romance from floating off into melodrama. Their chemistry is the film’s true lifeblood: aching, restrained, and occasionally feral.
Christoph Waltz, clearly enjoying another stroll through gothic canon, plays a shadowy priest whose knowledge of the supernatural threads the past to 1889 Paris. He brings that sly menace he does so well, the kind that smiles while it warns you of eternal damnation.
Visually, the film is sumptuous without tipping into self-parody. Besson balances sweeping battlements and cavernous halls with intimate candlelit chambers that feel steeped in breath and memory. The production design is opulent but not oppressive. Every corridor seems haunted by something much softer than terror, regret. The camera lingers where it should, moves when it must, and trusts silence as much as dialogue. When the script dips into philosophy about immortality and devotion, it never forgets to let a wry line of humor slip through.
What truly sets this Dracula apart is its perspective. The horror is there. Blood is spilled, bodies fall, and death arrives in brutal ways. But the driving force isn’t carnage. It’s persistence. This Vlad isn’t stalking for sport, he’s searching. Love, not hunger, is the curse that won’t let him rest. The film reframes immortality as an eternal act of remembering and refusing to let one face fade, even across centuries.
Comparisons to Eggers’ stark, expressionist take are inevitable, but they miss the point. Where Robert Eggers drenched his vampire in existential dread, Besson bathes his in moonlight. This version is warmer, more romantic, even playful at times. The menace never vanishes, but it’s tempered by hope. It’s gothic without wallowing in misery.
If you’re craving a Dracula that remembers the legend is, at its core, about desire that outlives reason, you might enjoy this. It’s stylish, swoony, occasionally savage. It’s far more rewatchable than skeptics might expect.
Dracula (2025) is rated R for explicit sexuality, intense violence (including stabbings, impalement, and beheadings), suicide, animal harm, and scenes involving traps and immolation. It’s not for the faint of heart, but then again, neither is eternal love.
Isy