It's a similar interpretation of the story, though it does meander off on different paths here and there. I haven't read the book so have no idea which is more faithful to it. There's no doubt that Christoph Waltz (Big Eyes, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained) (who can do no wrong in my book) carries the film as the priest in pursuit, but I'm afraid that Zoë Bleu is no Winona! Still the core cast, including Caleb Landry Jones (Finch) as the Count, do a decent and engaging job as they convince us of their roles. I think that Matilda De Angelis, camping it up as Maria, certainly stole the show in her scenes, too!
So yes, Vlad the Impaler (otherwise known as Dracula)'s wife dies in the 15th century while he's out in battle, he blames their god for allowing that to happen, smashes the place up, kills the Bishop and in doing so gets himself a curse of becoming a vampire and not being able to die. So now we leap forward 400 years and join him in his Romanian gothic castle as (not quite so dreary as 1992 Keanu Reeves') Jonathan arrives to conduct a property deal, leaving his fiancée Mina back at home waiting for him, wondering what's happened to her new friend Maria. We first see Dracula here and, sorry, but Landry Jones is not a patch on Gary Oldman's creation. He's not bad. Just not anywhere near as scary, dark, mad-looking and shudder-inducing!
The hapless Jonathan starts yakking with Dracula over dinner, he's sent to his bedroom for the night, told not to come out, does come out of course, and ends up in a rather tricky situation with Dracula about to drain him! However, Dracula is coaxed into sharing his life story as a 'last request' for Jonathan and sees the picture of Mina in his locket. Immediately Dracula sees that she is the image of Elizabeta, assumes it's her reincarnated, and heads for London to track her down.
Meanwhile, Christoph Waltz as the priest is busy fighting the demon (vampiric as it turns out) in Mina's new friend Maria in the dungeon of an asylum-looking hospital. The priest knows what's what, Maria knows what's what, so they dance the merry tune together taunting each other as she's chained up and can't move - waiting for her 'master' to arrive. Think Renfield in the 1992 film. So anyway, Dracula turns up and we head towards sorting out the mess - with a return visit to the castle in Romania to tie up the loose ends!
Director Luc Besson (Leon, Nikita) is clearly having great fun with the material and also penned the adaptation himself for this outing - with a runtime of just over 2 hours. It's done very well and if I wasn't such a fan of the 1992 version, I'm sure I'd have been even more bowled over with it. He's made the visuals lavish, sets gothic, characters interesting, thrills and horror chilling at times - and special effects, well, effective! The cinematography is richly layered with colours, shadows and lighting creating just the atmosphere he was after.
I did think that the pacing was a bit off and editing a little clipped as we often leapt from country to country, setting to setting in a blink of an eye with little context of the events en route. However, that's nit-picking because it's edge-of-seat stuff often, emotionally charged and the romance/love story/tragedy wrapper at times was sad and moving. I really enjoyed it. I do think that it's not as good as the 1992 version, but it was great fun to watch and the time flew in the process. Recommended.
If you haven't seen the 1992 one, watch this first, then that! It's rolling out today on limited streaming services from 1st December 2025 in the UK. SkyTV, Amazon and Apple first, by the looks of it. And for money. Or vouchers/tokens of course. Or you could always go the the cinema or wait for the DVD just before xmas.
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