Studio:   Vertical
Director: Luc Besson
Writer:   Luc Besson
Producer: Luc Besson
Stars:    Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoe Bleu, Matilda De Angelis, Ewens Abid, David Shields, Guillaume de Tonquedec

Review Score:

Summary:

400 years after becoming a vampire, Dracula resurfaces in Paris in search of his beloved wife’s reincarnation.

Synopsis:

In Eastern Europe in 1480 A.D., Vlad Dracula, the Prince of Walachia, leads an army in battle against the Ottoman forces of Sultan Mehmed II. Upon hearing his beloved wife, Princess Elisabeta, was ambushed, Dracula immediately abandons his mission to attempt a rescue. Dracula fights off several of Elisabeta’s attackers, but when he throws his sword through the back of one of them, the blade pierces and kills Elisabeta too. Blaming God for Elisabeta’s death, Dracula kills a cardinal inside a church, blasphemes his faith, and consequently incurs a divine curse that turns him into a vampire.

400 years later in Paris, Dr. Dumont summons a priest whose church has been hunting vampires for centuries to his asylum to examine a strange new patient, Maria de Montebello. After the priest concludes she is a vampire, Maria reveals she was transformed by a prince who is searching for his princess.

In Romania, solicitor Jonathan Harker visits Dracula at his castle to discuss a possible property purchase. Invited to stay the night following a peculiar dinner, Jonathan searches the castle and finds Dracula resting in a coffin. Diminutive gargoyle servants suddenly attack and capture Jonathan.

Back in Paris, the priest visits Maria’s fiancé, Henry William Spencer, to search Maria’s bedroom for clues as to who turned her. Among other items, the priest finds an illustration of Princess Elisabeta torn from a book.

While preparing to drain his blood, Dracula asks Jonathan if he has a last wish. Jonathan asks to hear Dracula’s story, prompting Dracula to recount how he has waited 400 years for his wife to return to him. Dracula details how, after God cursed him to become a vampire, he searched several countries until he found a rare perfume capable of entrancing women. Dracula transformed several women including Maria to become his vampire servants, then he retreated to his castle with the hope that his disciples would one day find Elisabeta for him.

Dracula’s tale inspires Jonathan to discuss his fiancée, Mina Murray. From a picture in Jonathan’s locket, Dracula recognizes Mina as the reincarnation of his wife Elisabeta. As a reward for finding his lost love, Dracula spares Jonathan’s life.

The priest shows the illustration of Elisabeta to Dr. Dumont, identifying her as the woman whom his target has been searching for as long as his church has been searching for the vampire. Dumont’s clerk Simon points out that the woman in the illustration resembles a woman in the asylum waiting room, who turns out to be Mina Murray.

Mina explains to the priest and Dr. Dumont that she recently befriended Maria de Montebello and came to the hospital to check on her condition. Mina recounts how Maria suffered the breakdown that institutionalized her when a priest arrived for Maria’s wedding to Henry Spencer. The strange ordeal also caused Mina to have a worrisome premonition about her own engagement to Jonathan Harker.

Disguised as a beggar, Dracula infiltrates a convent where he hypnotizes numerous nuns whose blood he uses to restore him to a humanlike appearance. Dracula then goes to the Paris asylum to free his servant Maria after giving her Simon the clerk to feed on as a reward for locating Mina. Upon finding Simon with fangs, the priest tells Dr. Dumont they must warn Mina.

Maria introduces Mina to Dracula. The three of them attend a carnival where Dracula continues seducing Mina. Back at his hotel afterward, Dracula gifts Mina a keepsake music box whose entrancing melody connects her memory to Elisabeta’s.

Mina returns to her own home to find the priest and Dr. Dumont tending to a wounded Jonathan, who escaped Dracula’s castle and gargoyle minions. The priest warns Mina that Count Dracula attacked her fiancé, and he is also responsible for infecting her friend Maria. Shocked by the revelation, Mina contends that she met Dracula and found him charming. The priest explains Dracula is a vampire who uses perfume to seduce victims, and Mina may be under his spell without even realizing it.

Dracula appears in Mina’s room when she is alone and listening to the music box that connects her to Elisabeta. Mina succumbs to Dracula’s seduction and they begin making love, during which Dracula bites Mina’s neck.

When they find Mina missing from her room, the priest concludes Dracula absconded with her back to Romania. Enlisting Jonathan to direct he and Dr. Dumont to Dracula’s castle, the priest also makes a plan to seek additional aid from Maria’s fiancé Henry.

The priest, Dr. Dumont, and Jonathan arrive at Henry’s in time to interrupt him being attacked by Maria in vampire form. The priest shoots Maria in her chest, but she is unaffected. Jonathan uses a sword to behead her, followed by the priest staking Maria’s heart with a cross that finally kills her.

Led by the priest, Dr. Dumont, Jonathan, and Henry, a band of soldiers assaults Dracula’s castle in Romania. Dracula fights the soldiers while the soldiers also battle the gargoyles.

Dracula and the priest confront each other. With Dracula still denouncing God, the priest contends he was sent by God to give Dracula an opportunity to repent for salvation. The priest goes on to challenge Dracula to be slain so he can release Mina to live a human life, in turn allowing Dracula to finally be at peace for eternity. Dracula ultimately allows the priest to stake him through his heart in order to save Mina.

With Dracula’s spell broken, the priest bids farewell to Dr. Dumont. The gargoyles turn back into children who had been enslaved. Jonathan finds Mina mourning Dracula’s death as his body crumbles to dust that swirls outside and into the sky.

Review:

Filmmaker Luc Besson’s overindulgence in the bombastic theatrics of extravagantly armored soldiers on horseback, gaudy gold gilding decorating a grand ballroom’s costumed dance number, and generally garish period-piece pageantry spanning two separate eras shouldn’t be mistaken for elegant auteur artistry. Originally titled “Dracula: A Love Tale,” “Dracula’s” comparatively high production value may put it above the cheesy cheapness of “Lost in Space” or Adam West’s “Batman,” but it’s just a flashier heap of pure camp from beginning to end, made even more amusing because the movie doesn’t exhibit the self-awareness to realize it.

Snickers start immediately, with Prince Vlad Dracula and his beloved wife Princess Elisabeta demonstrating their deep passion for one another the way all royal couples presumably do: by having a pillow fight in slow motion. The wordless montage meant to make their undying love the story’s anchor doesn’t include poetic endearments, joyful tears of emotion, or silhouettes against sunset landscapes. It does, however, include a mini-food fight where they sloppily push porridge into each other’s mouths, awkwardly dance in Ebeneezer Scrooge dressing gowns, and ignore their rose petal-covered bed to have sex up against a wall as though they’re in a dive bar bathroom.

Like Superman’s odyssey from the doomed planet Krypton or Batman’s parents getting gunned down in Crime Alley, Dracula’s origin is among the most done-to-death tales in fiction. That doesn’t stop writer/director Besson from retelling it for the hundredth time, or from quizzically creating a visual template that’s nearly identical to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film.

When the cursed count reappears in Romania 400 years after his wife’s death inspires the blasphemy that turns him undead, Dracula’s prune head sports a bizarrely bouffant white wig that screams, “You thought Gary Oldman’s dueling beehives looked ridiculous? Hold my chalice of rat-blood wine.” The shape is so unserious, it makes the gargantuan rings turning Dracula’s hand into a bejeweled catcher’s mitt seem like a modest design choice by default.

Should you need more absurd sights, “Dracula” has plenty to go around. Leading the pack is a hilarious cutaway after a despondent Dracula desecrates a church by slaying a cardinal, then we see a polka dot-dressed Jesus weeping blood on a crucifix while Danny Elfman’s surprisingly vanilla score bursts into a pompous crescendo. Perhaps you’d prefer Dracula’s dwarfish minions from Salacious Crumb’s family tree of goofy computer-animated gargoyles? How about hypnotized nuns forming a writhing tower of bodies so they can hoist Dracula like a crowd-surfing rockstar toward a night sky streaked by incessant lightning strikes, another staple of the film’s overwrought style?

Given the aggrandizing tone overall, it’s a minor marvel the dialogue doesn’t meet the music and imagery at their levels of pretentiousness. Not for lack of trying. “Living without love is the worst disease of all, my friend. It is like a fine, incessant rain. It gradually eats away at your bones, turning you into a form of sponge, unable to stand upright.” Huh?

As cinema history has proven time and again, unintentional silliness isn’t sustainable for 129 minutes worth of ironic entertainment. Once the vague fun factor of a Full Moon feature blowing up a big budget wears off, “Dracula” turns into a long, slow slog through dry drama.

The subtitle is/was “A Love Tale,” but Dracula doesn’t meet Mina, his wife’s reincarnation, until almost 80 minutes into the movie. The main scene of Dracula starting to seduce Mina involves attending a carnival together, except they have Mina’s friend and Dracula’s enslaved servant Maria tagging along to make a trio. In between eating crepes and applauding a puppet show, Dracula observes from the background as the women sip sherry and throw bean bags at cans on the midway. Is there any better way to rekindle a centuries-old romance than by standing behind your beloved as she and her bestie gawk at a bearded lady inside a crowded circus tent?

Performances can be described by each cast member’s predominant expression. Caleb Landry Jones’s perpetually pained face looks like he’s ready to imitate another Gary Oldman role in a different Luc Besson film by shouting a volatile “Everyone!” at any moment. Playing an underwritten Van Helsing surrogate as a priest who curiously goes unnamed, Christoph Waltz looks like he got lost on his way to a better role, yet he decided to stick around with a distracted stare to see how many more cars might pile up in this trainwreck.

Put together like a made-for-TV movie with the misspent money of a theatrical blockbuster, “Dracula” has a hard time finding a buoy to save it from drowning in the endless ocean of Dracula adaptations. “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” does almost everything the same, but exponentially better. Robert Eggers’s “Nosferatu” (review here) predates it by only one year. And “Argento’s Dracula” (review here) already beat Besson to the punch by having the Italian maestro be the first formerly unstoppable artiste to deliver a disappointing Dracula past his career’s prime. Luc Besson’s “Dracula” may have to settle for an asterisk as a film weirder than any oddity in the mermaid-headlined freakshow Dracula attends with the object of his affection and her gal pal.

Review Score: 45