Did you know that Luc Besson made a Dracula (2025) movie last year? Us neither. But I was willing to give it a shot. based on that alone.
Dracula is played by Caleb Landry Jones. The movie starts with Jones going to war against the Ottomans, ordering his priest to tell God to protect his beloved Zoe Bleu. When he returns and finds Bleu dead, he kills the priest, renouces God, and so becomes a vampire. That's all it took.
He will use his immortality to search for the reincarnation of Bleu. Wasn't that the Mummy's deal, not Dracula? He develops a special cologne that women can't resist, so that will help with the search.
Much later, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid) visits Castle Dracula about a land deal. Jones is now in extreme old age makeup, with a wig very similar to the one Oldman wore in Coppola' Dracula. He sees a locket with a portrait of Harker's intended, Mina, and realizes that she is the one he has been seeking, Zoe Bleu come back to life.
So he has his CGI gargoyles hold him prisoner and sets off the Paris for find her. A little blood, and he's looking like a young dandy again, and is soon courting Bleu and trying to get her to rmember her past life.
But Abid has gotten free of the gargoyles and found Father Christoph Waltz, vampire hunter. Not van Helsing, though. He was Jewish, Walz is Catholic. But will they be able to save Bleu?
This is a good looking but odd movie. The gargoyles, the perfume, the non-van-Helsing, and so many other details that don't quite belong. But other details seem to come from other movies, to the extent that I wondered if there were elements of parody in Besson's plan.
But I think the main impetus for this movie was to allow Caleb Landry Jones to go wild, with multiple make-up and acting styles. We haven't seen him in much (X-Men: First Class), but he seems to be fun to watch. The rest of the movie is luxurious and lovely, but that might be more of the Coppola homage.
Not a great Dracula, but not bad. I can see how Nosferatu overshadowed it.
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