Making film adaptations of classic literary works, especially on the level of Bram Stoker's "Dracula", is an idea with its own set of pros and cons. On the one hand, the authors immediately get a recognizable image that will additionally attract the audience. On the other hand, they will have to compete with many other film adaptations. This fact did not stop Luc Besson when he took up his own version of "Dracula", emphasizing the high feeling of love. There is indeed a lot of love in the film, but this does not save from the feeling of boredom.
| Name | Dracula: A Love Tale |
| Genre | drama, romance, horror, fantasy |
| Director | Luc Besson |
| Cast | Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Matilda De Angelis, Zoe Blue and others |
| Studios | Luc Besson Production, SND |
| Timing | 2 hours 9 minutes |
| Year | 2025 |
| Link | IMDb |
For Vlad II Dracula (Caleb Landry Jones), the greatest treasure in life was his beloved Elizabeth (Zoe Blue), but the invaders killed her, which made the man disillusioned with life and renounced God. He turned into a cursed creature who cannot die and must drink the blood of the living to regain his human form. However, Dracula believes that Elizabeth can still return, so he begins to search for her. Of course, for ordinary people, they do not bode well.
Besson did not even hide during an interview with Deadline that the story of Dracula itself does not interest him very much. First of all, he was interested in the personality of Caleb Landry Jones, whom he met during the filming of the film Dogman. The actor's talent so impressed the director that he almost immediately began to invent roles for him so that he could reveal himself as much as possible. And the conversation gradually got to Dracula, which seemed like an ideal option.
But it cannot be said that Besson did not pay attention to the canons invented by Stoker at all. On the contrary, the film crew treated the original source with respect, and at the same time - also to Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. The film even tries to imitate the epistolary genre of the book, so it regularly experiments with scenes, timelines and changes in tone. Usually, such techniques make the story more dynamic, but in the case of Dracula: A Love Tale it somehow does not help.
And this is despite the fact that Caleb Landry Jones' acting really deserves the best reviews. His Dracula is a tragic, ambiguous character, who at the same time remains close to the audience thanks to the mad love at the heart of all his actions. He is interesting to watch, interesting to listen to, each of his appearances instantly makes the film brighter. But is just one actor and his talent enough for two hours of running time?
Dracula: A LoveTale demonstrates that Besson's direction has become noticeably outdated. Not "pleasantly old-fashioned", not "nostalgic", but outdated in the worst sense of the word. Boring editing, lack of creative scenes, too flat tone and bland atmosphere destroy the viewer's interaction with the story. And this with fresh memories of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu, which perfectly combined modern cinematography with the Gothic atmosphere of the classics.
Besson simply tells the story as if during a normal conversation in some neutral cafe. This approach has the right to exist, but not in the case of Dracula, about whom we have heard hundreds of times. Therefore, nothing interesting remains in another retelling, even with some non-standard trifles. The emphasis on love, which was even carried out in the title of the film, also does not work, because Stoker's original work and Coppola's film adaptation were also partly about love. But they were not limited to one topic, telling at the same time about many problems of contemporary and modern society. Besson managed to adapt an immortal classic only in the format of a second-rate melodrama. Seeing this from the man who gave us Leon, is as wild as possible.
Dracula: A Love Tale says the same thing all the time, and any attempts to deviate from the main theme turn into a farce. For example, one of the central elements of the story resembles a strange parody of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, but its implementation only causes laughter. The normal development of the image and life of Dracula is absent in the film, his henchmen are completely faceless, and it is even strange how he could exist and kill people for so many years.
The film even tries to develop its own setting, which is helped by the character of the priest Christoph Waltz, who, by the way, also turned out to be charismatic, but fails here too. All the talk about the nature of vampires and the order that studies them and fights them remains only empty sounds in the air. Dracula: A Love Tale in general often sacrifices common sense and adequate behavior of the characters in order to seem more pathos and emotional. This inclines the film closer to theatrical art than to cinema.
Yes, the film has a good reproduction of the selected eras, and the scenery, costumes and many other details do not raise questions. Frankly speaking, when you start to analyze the individual elements of the picture, you cannot say that they are bad. In Dracula: A Love Tale everything is done at a fairly high level, even the computer graphics of the monsters, although simple, do not cause disgust. It's just that all the elements in a single space do not cause admiration.
Dracula: A Love Tale is a film that would have been perfect for television in the early 2000s or late 1990s. But in 2025, even a depiction of all-encompassing love is too little to make a truly interesting film.