Movie Review – ‘Dracula: A Love Tale’ is the bloody gothic horror for the eternal romantic

I’ve been around the Internet long enough to know folks don’t like movies they’ve seen a million times.

Yes, we did just have Nosferatu (2024), and it was not universally loved, but fear not, gothic lovers. If you found Robert Eggers’ retelling of the German Great Value Vampire Movie disconnected, off-putting and flat out weird, Dracula: A Love Tale (2026) brings its own brand of weirdly romantic horror, and it’s far more fun and worth a few viewings.

Luc Besson’s Dracula reimagines the immortal count’s tragic saga through a lush, romantic lens, following the centuries-spanning yearning of a cursed nobleman. Played with haunted magnetism, Caleb Landry Jones is the warrior prince Vladimir II of Wallachia, whose eternal devotion to his murdered bride transcends time and mortality. Opposite him, Christoph Waltz working his way through the gothic classics, delivers a sly, quietly menacing turn as the enigmatic and unnamed priest bringing deep esoteric knowledge about a rumored demonic immortal haunting the 1889 Paris Exposition. Zoë Bleu radiates intelligence and aching vulnerability as Elisabeta/Mina, his reincarnated love who becomes the axis of Vlad’s redemption. In three sweeping movements of loss, exile, and rediscovery, Dracula charts a gothic odyssey that feels at once intimate and operatic, driven by performances that smolder beneath candlelight and moon-shadow.

From its opening frames, the film announces itself as a feast of design and intention. The set pieces are visually sumptuous without being suffocating, balancing grand baroque halls with windswept battlements and candlelit chambers that feel lived-in. Besson’s eye for composition is kinetic, and every corridor seems to breathe with history, every crypt hums with restrained emotion. The pacing is deliberate but never languid, moving with the steady pulse of a heart that refuses to die. The dialogue is smart and snappy, and heavy philosophical musings on immortality glide seamlessly into dry humor. The writing is sharp and romantic without tipping into sentimentality, and it’s boldly confident enough to allow silence to speak volumes.

What distinguishes Dracula is its departure from the traditional horror-forward narrative in favor of a sweeping meditation on devotion and endurance. Rather than focusing solely on bloodlust and terror, the film centers the aching persistence of love across centuries. Vlad is less a predator than a heartsick pilgrim, wandering through time in search of a face he cannot forget. The romance is not a mere subplot but the animating force of the story, adapting familiar mythic beats into moments of longing and grace. Immortality becomes both curse and covenant—an unending testament to the power of memory and desire. In reframing the legend as a requiem for lost love, Besson invites audiences to consider that what endures longest is not fear, but feeling.

Inevitably, there will be teeth-gnashing comparisons to Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (2024), which drew inspiration from F.W. Murnau’s 1922 cinematic fan-fic of Bram Stoker’s 1897 vampire novel, that shadow-drenched cornerstone of vampire cinema, yet Besson’s Dracula feels like its moonlit counterpart rather than its echo, brothers from another mother, if you will. Where Nosferatu leans into stark expressionism and existential dread, Besson’s vision is warmer, more playful, and less heavy-handed in its symbolism. The darkness here is softened by romance, the menace tempered by wit. Even in its most somber moments, Dracula carries a buoyant undercurrent of hope. It is gothic without being grim, reverent of tradition without being trapped by it. In the end, this Dracula is not merely a tale of the undead—it is a celebration of undying love, delivered with style, heart, and a surprising sense of fun.

Dracula: A Love Tale (2026) is rated R for enthusiastic sexytimes, beartraps, immolation, people getting stabbed, bitten, and run-through, also suicide, animal injury (see bear traps), and beheadings.