Vampire seeks wife – The ravages of time do not suck at “Dracula”

Bram Stoker's Transylvanian vampire cannot escape his fate. Although he has died many cinematic deaths, he seems doomed to eternal life on screen. After Robert Eggers last rescued him from the crypt in his bloody serious film "Nosferatu," the Romanian aristocrat has now fallen into the hands of Luc Besson, who, in turn, was inspired by Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992) – and tells a love story at its core.

Although Prince Vlad II (Caleb Landry Jones) fights for the Church at the end of the 15th century, his wife Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) is killed. As a result, he bloodily renounces God. From then on, he is condemned to walk forever in the shadow of death. As Count Dracula, a real estate matter draws him to Paris at the end of the 19th century. There, he believes he recognizes Elisabeta in Mina (also Zoë Bleu).

Unlike Coppola, Besson doesn't indulge in any artistic pretensions in his appropriately bloodthirsty but never truly terrifying version of Dracula. Unafraid of trashiness, he directs his panopticon of characters through lavish scenery and a not always compelling dramaturgy.

In the thick of it all: a cheerful Christoph Waltz as a priestly vampire hunter and Caleb Landry Jones as the title character, who—sometimes in the form of a dandyish young man, sometimes as a turtle-skinned old man—prefers to quench his thirst for blood on women. With one noble goal, after all: to reunite with his beloved.

“Dracula – The Resurrection,” directed by Luc Besson, with Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoë Bleu, 129 minutes, FSK 16