Editor’s Note: More Dracula? Seriously? Freeline Media movie critic Mike Fried has his thoughts about Luc Besson’s new Dracula movie — does it bite? Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
There is a scene in Luc Besson’s new version of Dracula where Jonathan Harper is talking to Count Dracula, and on the wall are portraits of many men. Each of the portraits has a resemblance to prior actors who have played the Count. It’s a nice touch in a film that really got savaged by the critics.
This version seems to be most closely related to Francis Ford Coppola’s magnificent version of the Bram Stoker tale. Vlad was an impaler, a prince whose only love was Elisabeta; but she gets killed while Vlad is fighting invaders to his land. He renounces God and becomes Dracula, creating other vampires to aid him in his quest to find Elisabeta’s incarnation. You know the story — Jonathan Harker comes to Dracula’s castle to review a real estate deal and Dracula sees that Harker’s fiancée, Mina, is the spittin’ image of his dear departed Elisabeta. So, rejuvenated with nuns’ blood, he heads to Paris to reclaim his love. Yeah, Paris, not London, but, hey, Luc Besson is French.
While this film cannot compete with earlier incarnations of the Prince of Darkness (Coppola, Murnau, Browning, Fisher and Barton, to name the best) this happens to be Luc Besson’s best film since Lucy in 2014 and, before that, Leon in 1994. He’s ahead of schedule. He wasn’t due for another good movie until 2034.
When I heard that Caleb Landry Jones was slated to play the title character, I was dubious. I mean, he was freaking Louis on Breaking Bad and the evil brother in Get Out. I was not prepared for the nuanced feeling and career-best performance he gave. He is a man pained by the loss of a loved one and unlike Lugosi — who had no backstory — and Oldman (who was rather cheeky), he plays the role and amps up the remorse of his actions as a means to an end (to meet up with Elisabeta once again).
And no great Dracula story would be complete without an adversary. Instead of Professor Van Helsing, we are treated to Christoph Waltz absolutely chewing up the scenery as The Priest. Whereas, all prior Van Helsing’s have been dour, serious people, here we get Dr. King Schultz in clerical garb.
And the juxtaposition of the roles is what makes the film work. In addition, there’s an outstanding production design (especially the 1889 Paris Exposition and the interiors of Dracula’s castle) that is enhanced by glorious cinematography, giving this film its mesmerizing countenance. Danny Elfman’s haunting score also adds so much to the atmosphere of the film, no more so than the soaring closing credits theme.
And like Bram Stoker’s novel, this Dracula is fully at home in the sunlight — Murnau invented the sunlight killer trope.
Besson swings for the fences, though, and sometimes he strikes out. And it’s hard to shake the film’s derivativeness. Besson, in interviews, wanted to include the Dracula/Mina love story from the novel — the novel had no such love story. And I didn’t buy the fact that Mina is a reincarnation of her past life self and Mina could see her past. Further, the elixir that Dracula uses as a perfume to entice his minions is a bit far-fetched.
The ending kind of disappoints as Besson cannot help himself and turns the movie into an action film. There is one sequence that is lifted directly from Oldboy (the good version not the Spike Lee version).
But overall I wish I hadn’t listened to the critics and had gone to see this in the theater because I am sure it would have looked even more splendid on the big screen.
WATCH IT!
3.5/5
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
