I don’t know why we have another Dracula film, but I could have said the same thing about last years Frankenstein and Wolfman films.Luc Besson just doesn’t feel like the guy to do a Dracula film. Guillermo Del toro does, but not Besson. Still, his Dracula is competent. It isn’t great, but it is competent. The story centers around a young prince in the 14th century (Caleb Landry Jones) who forsakes God and is cursed forever to live as Dracula.Jones’s performance especially if you didn’t see Bill Skarsgard lose himself in Nosferatu. Jones was better in the very eccentric DogMan, which was the last film he did with Besson.

Apparently Del toro and Besson both needed the same actor to complete their projects, and while Christoph Waltz is certainly a solid bet, he wasn’t the most interesting part of Frankenstein, and he’s in another movie entirely. Waltz ended up in a role where he felt the need to go big, but it doesn’t mesh with anyone above him, nor does he feel like he’s being properly directed. So, while Besson’s dracula is probably a little over the threshold for Fresh, I couldn’t get past the performance by Waltz. As a fan since Inglorious Basterds, and someone who enjoyed him last year on Only Murders In The Building, his doctor/scientist is probably his worst role. For a film fighting to marginally end up on top, the distracting Del toro performance tanked it down. It’s like doing a list of pros and cons, and all my pros are “wasn’t that bad” or something else like Caleb Landry Jones still proving himself an underappreciated actor. There’s this strong feeling that Waltz made all his scenes worse, and while he’s not in all of the film, he does have quite a bit to do.

Besson isn’t a master of horror, so don’t expect to get on the same level as Robert Eggers in Nosferatu. Eggers had already done a few challenging projects, and Nosferatu, was the culmination of his path. Here, Besson delivers like a studio head summoned him to make a competent, hopefully good production. They mostly achieved it, but I have to wonder why Besson has a sudden lust for horror, since his career is peppered with The professional, The Fifth Element, Valerian, Lucy, The Messenger, and la femme Nikita. What about this resume screams Dracula? The weird thing is that we don’t always rush right back in on the next one, especially if this doesn’t do well, so if someone like an Ari Aster wanted to try his hand at Dracula, he may need to shift it back on his to-do list.

Luc Besson wasn’t the right person for an exciting new Dracula, but Christoph Waltz certainly was poorly directed, with his choices being closer to camp than a serious performance.

Rotten: 5.8/10