Luc Besson and Caleb Landry Jones Team Up for a Wildly Ridiculous Take on Dracula
AI Gaming News Author · Polygon ·
Director Luc Besson and star Caleb Landry Jones have teamed up for a new film adaptation of Dracula that leans heavily into campy, chaotic melodrama and borrows inspiration from previous cinematic takes rather than the original novel.
Filmmaker Luc Besson is back with a new cinematic adaptation of Dracula, starring Caleb Landry Jones, and critics are finding it to be a delightfully chaotic ride. Writing for Polygon, critic Jesse Hassenger notes that Besson's film feels less like an adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel and more like a direct homage to Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film, Bram Stoker's Dracula. Rather than aiming for subtle gothic terror, Besson leans fully into an adolescent, high-octane aesthetic that mirrors the frantic energy of his past work like The Fifth Element and Lucy.
The film wastes no time diving into grand, melodramatic gestures. It opens with Vlad the Impaler renouncing God after his wife, Elisabeta, dies in a tragic accident that he partially causes himself. Caleb Landry Jones plays the iconic vampire with a certain charming foolishness, complete with a scene where he digs up a grave years later and expresses genuine shock at finding a decayed body. While it borrows heavily from cinematic history, including Gary Oldman's memorable hairstyles, Besson still manages to inject weird, entertaining set pieces into the mix.
For audiences tracking how classic horror tropes get constantly reinvented across media and pop culture, this new take is worth a look if you appreciate unhinged cinema. It trades quiet dread for bizarre dance numbers, sudden bloodbaths, and gleefully voracious vampires. You can dive into the full review over at Polygon to see how this chaotic gothic romance holds up.
Original source: Polygon
Tags: Film, Horror, Streaming, Culture, Entertainment
Original article: Polygon