Dracula (2025)

Luc Besson’s Dracula is a film that fails on several levels, but its greatest failure is the one that comes closest to redeeming it.

First, however, in the long list of missteps, Besson has chosen to revisit the romantic interpretation of Dracula that began to take shape in Dan Curtis’s 1974 television film starring Jack Palance and reached its most extravagant expression in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This has never been my favorite approach to the story. Turning Dracula into a tragic lover whose centuries of evil began with the loss of his beloved changes the nature of the character. His victims become secondary to his suffering, and his predation becomes an expression of a love that death could not overcome. Besson adds his own variations to the story, but the familiar romantic framework remains. The music, too, often recalls Coppola’s film so strongly that it is difficult not to feel that we have been here before.

The film has other problems. Its attempts at comedy are often awkward, and the shifts in tone undermine the Gothic atmosphere. Yet these are relatively minor complaints compared with the film’s attempt to give Dracula’s story a Christian resolution. Besson wants to say something about repentance, and there is something commendable in the idea that even the worst of sinners is not beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Unfortunately, the film’s understanding of redemption is less convincing than its intentions.

Dracula’s immortality is presented as a curse, but it also seems to offer him centuries in which to repent. This raises a problem that the film never adequately addresses. In Genesis 3, God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and prevents them from taking fruit from the Tree of Life and living forever in their fallen condition. Death is a consequence of sin, and Scripture calls it an enemy, but fallen humanity is not permitted to remain forever in its sinful state. There is a judgment in this, but also a mercy. Imagine what it would mean to live eternally under the power of sin, with no end to its corruption. Dracula’s endless existence does not heal him. It allows his rebellion to continue for centuries, multiplying the suffering he inflicts on others. More time does not necessarily bring repentance, because repentance is not the inevitable result of experience. It requires a turning away from sin and a turning toward God.

The film’s conclusion also confuses repentance with self-sacrifice. There is certainly a Christian virtue in laying down one’s life for another. But no human sacrifice can accomplish what Christ’s sacrifice accomplished. Dracula cannot atone for centuries of evil by making one final heroic gesture. His willingness to sacrifice himself might demonstrate that he has finally turned away from his selfish desires, but it cannot purchase his salvation. Christ’s death and resurrection, not our own suffering, are the grounds of our reconciliation with God.

I appreciate that Besson attempts to deal with repentance and the possibility of redemption, even for someone as evil as Dracula. Christianity does not teach that some sinners are beyond the reach of grace. But repentance is more than sorrow over what we have lost, and redemption is more than a final act of self-sacrifice. Dracula’s tragedy is not simply that he has been separated from the woman he loves. It is that he has rebelled against God and spent centuries destroying others. A Christian resolution would have to confront that reality. Besson comes close enough to make the attempt interesting, but his understanding of salvation falls short. In the end, Dracula offers the language of Christian redemption without quite grasping what redemption means.