{"id":13998,"date":"2026-02-03T19:56:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T00:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13998"},"modified":"2026-02-21T16:52:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T21:52:50","slug":"dracula-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/02\/03\/dracula-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Dracula (2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Dracula<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vertical\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 129 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, some gore, sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Luc Besson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Luc Besson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Danny Elfman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Colin Wandersman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 6, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoe Bleu, Matilda De Angelis, Ewens Abid, David Shields, Guillaume de Tonquedec, Bertrand-Xavier Corbi, Raphael Luce.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are those who will argue that the new Dracula<\/strong> is writer-director Luc Besson\u2019s interpretation of the 1897 Bram Stoker novel. I don\u2019t see it that way. To me, it\u2019s more like a less stylish redo of the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film starring Gary Oldman as the titular vampire. It feels like Besson watched it a few times, made a few changes to the story and filmed a version he could call his own. The mechanics of it are fine and that\u2019s the problem. It feels more like product than art. It lacks heart and soul.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I should have known Dracula<\/strong> (aka Dracula: A Love Tale) was going to be a disappointment with how Vertical relegated it to a February release date. I didn\u2019t want that to be true. I thought it couldn\u2019t miss with a director like Besson at the helm. He\u2019s done some great work in the past- e.g. The Big Blue (1988), La Femme Nikita (1990), Leon the Professional (1994), The Fifth Element (1997) and Lucy (2014). I figured if anybody could make it work, it would be Luc. Sadly, he misses the mark. It\u2019s supposed to be a love story, but it\u2019s too workmanlike to achieve the desired emotional effect. It doesn\u2019t feel timeless.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You all know the story of Dracula, formerly Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler. He turned his back on God after He allowed his true love Elisabeta (Bleu) to die at the hands of the Ottomans. Cursed with immortality, he spends the next 400 years looking for her reincarnation. He finds her when Parisian solicitor Jonathan Harker (Abid) shows up at his castle to conduct business. He shows the aged count a picture of his fiancee Mina Murray (Bleu again). Sure enough, it\u2019s her. He heads to Paris to reclaim what was taken from him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s one major difference between this Dracula<\/strong> and other versions. Vampire slayer Van Helsing isn\u2019t anywhere to be found. In his stead is an unnamed priest from Germany (Waltz, Inglorious Basterds). He\u2019s part of an order that hunts down vampires. He shows up after one of Dracula\u2019s agents (De Angelis) is committed to the local asylum. At some point, he turned a bunch of women into vampires to help him find Elisabeta. Now that one\u2019s in custody, maybe it will lure him out of hiding so the priest can deal with him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You may have noticed I didn\u2019t mention who plays Dracula. That\u2019s not an oversight. Quite the opposite, there\u2019s a method to my madness. I\u2019ll get to it in my own time. As I watched Dracula<\/strong> unfold last night, I thought back to the many actors who played him in the past with varying degrees of success: Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Christopher Lee, Udo Kier, Frank Langella, Gary Oldman and Gerard Butler. They all brought something to the role. The same can\u2019t be said of Caleb Landry Jones (Get Out) who plays him in Besson\u2019s film. He\u2019s rather bland. He\u2019s never convincing in any capacity, not as a monster or a romantic. It\u2019s not even his performance if you think about it. He looks exactly like Oldman did under all that old age makeup. It\u2019s a shame because Jones really is a good actor. He\u2019s just miscast here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It gets worse. The actor has no chemistry at all with Bleu who delivers an extremely wooden performance. She\u2019s no more than a presence here. I couldn\u2019t help but think how much better Lily-Rose Depp would have been in the role. At the very least, it would be ironic casting as she played essentially the same role in Nosferatu a couple of years back. Waltz isn\u2019t too bad as not-Van Helsing. I wish he had camped it up more. Abid is terrible as Jonathan Harker. He makes Keanu Reeves\u2019 performance in FFC\u2019s movie look like Oscar material.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Not all of Dracula<\/strong> sucks. The little gargoyle creatures running around Drac\u2019s castle are pretty cool. It\u2019s a handsomely mounted production. The sets and costumes are period authentic. The score by Danny Elfman augments the movie\u2019s strange vibe. It has a few decent gory effects. There\u2019s a dance sequence that traverses well into bizarre territory. However, it doesn\u2019t save the movie from sinking under the weight of its tonal dissonance. It\u2019s an uneven mix of horror, Gothic romance and goofy stuff. One could say the same of FFC\u2019s version, but he handled it well. He made it operatic. Luc doesn\u2019t manage it at all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I hate to say it, but this Dracula<\/strong> is a staggering disappointment. I wasn\u2019t bored by it. On the contrary, it held my interest, but not for the reasons intended by its maker. In the end, it feels trite, emotionally hollow and entirely unnecessary. Maybe it\u2019s time to give the old bloodsucker a rest? Maybe it\u2019s time to give the old bloodsucker a rest?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dracula (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vertical\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 129 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, some gore, sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Luc Besson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Luc Besson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Danny Elfman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Colin Wandersman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 6, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoe Bleu, Matilda De Angelis, Ewens Abid, David Shields, Guillaume de Tonquedec, Bertrand-Xavier Corbi, Raphael Luce. Rating: ** \u00a0There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14000,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Dracula-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14001,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13998\/revisions\/14001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}