I was 7 years old when I watched the 1992 Dracula film with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder. It made the kind of impression on me that makes you love a piece of source material for rest of your life. I remember throwing myself into books about vampires, Vlad the Impaler, Elizabeth Bathory. Slavic tales of Strigoi and Moroi, Chinese stories of Jiangshi, and the most goated video game/animated series of all time Castlevania. There are many types of vampire from many cultures and they’re all so cool, but there is one piece of media that really brought the lore of vampires to life and that was Dracula. There’s a reason why Dracula made such an impact in media. A yearning, dreadful love story that dooms its characters to ruin. A mere man that loses the love of his life and rejects his faith, cursing it and himself to stalk the dark of the night forever. Vlad Dracula is a man that is punished for hubris, a lesson that he seems to never learn. 

Which brings us to 2026 (2025 if you’re European). A new remake of a film that I don’t think anyone asked for, but that I’ve seen no one complain about. There are a few things in this film that I could complain about, but in the grand scheme of things I don’t think these problems ruin the experience at all. Over all the film is a devastating take on a story that is already devastating enough, and i think Dracula and Elisabeta deserved more time. But thats just my opinion. 

The film opens with an adorable montage of two people that are so in love with each other that they can’t even take their hands away from one another, even when war knocks on the princes door. Dracula is taken from her to go and fight (in pretty sick dragon armor), and Elisabeta is taken to a safe place in her wedding dress. The fight on Draculas side is successful, but Elisabeta isn’t so lucky, getting caught by the Turkish army and cornered in a field of bear traps. She steps in one and it incapacitates her, and as Dracula finds her and gives her attacker the killing blow, he also accidentally mortally wounds the love of his life. She dies in his arms and this begins 400 years of mourning and sadness. 

John Harker travels to Walachia on business to secure paper work for real estate, and this experience goes bad fairly quickly. John gets bitten and strapped to a chair, about to die when he and Dracula start to talk. John mentions that he has a fiancée and shows Dracula a photo of her in a locket and one of the best scenes I have ever seen takes place. Dracula looks and sounds like he can’t even breathe, seeing Elisabeta’s face again. He is so desperate and relieved that he stumbles through the castle exclaiming that he needs blood and needs to be beautiful so that he can see her again. It’s a beautiful scene, and I feel like i need to mention that Caleb Landry Jones looked FANTASTIC in his old man Drac get up. 

I’m really glad that John Harkers part in the story was toned down for this film, and i think it could’ve been reeled back even more. It was obvious that John was not the focal point of this retelling, and i feel like they did a good job of making it known that John didn’t matter here. Dracula and Mina did. 

One of the things I always wanted to know was what was Dracula doing in the years between Elisabetas death and John Harkers visit. What does a super depressed guy that can’t die do for 400 years? Well, this film gives us a little bit of what may have happened. Dracula has a perfume made that causes debauchery to happen in his search for Elisabetas reincarnated soul. It was a pretty entertaining part of this movie, and the shots of Dracula putting the perfume on is kind of iconic. This is where he meets Maria though, at a party in 1700’s France. 

Maria is a very interesting character to me. I mean, this girl is BONKERS. She is the one that brings Mina to Dracula and reunites them after meeting her and developing a friendship with her. When she gets caught by the priest to be questioned she almost looks like she’s taken a big dose of ecstasy. When her vampiric nature is revealed at her wedding to Henry Spencer, she completely flips and is killed in a parlor room in kind of a funny way. I think she was a pretty interesting character, but I think she could have been utilized more, which is part of my issues with the movie as a whole that I will discuss later. 

When Dracula and Mina meet, it is electric. Dracula has waited so long to see her again, and Mina is confused by the entire thing. This whole time we see Mina, staring into the fire as Elisabeta did, humming the music from the music box Dracula had given her and she doesn’t understand why she is so drawn to Dracula. Dracula is so down bad here. We live for a man that yearns. Anyways, they meet again at Mina’s lodging and she finally realizes who he is, who she is. It’s really adorable and i love that Mina just goes with it. 

It is at this part of the film where I start to have my problems. It felt like so many things were happening at once and so fast that i couldn’t keep up with what was happening. It feels kind of nitpicky, but i feel like the sequence between Dracula and Mina meeting to them coming back to Draculas castle was very rushed. I didn’t know what was happening. When did Maria get engaged? What plan are they making to get Mina back? Who are these people in red suits showing up to the castle? It all happened so fast and it bamboozled me a bit. 

Now here’s the part of the story that pissed me off, not because the writing was bad but simply because I was deeply attached to these characters at this point. They DESERVED MORE TIME. They were so full of joy to be together again and these assholes had to crush it and it makes me upset. We also got some SICK fighting scenes with the gargoyles out of it (Caleb Landry Jones you are INCREDIBLE sweetie). 

I’ll be honest, i cried my eyes out at the end. I didn’t think any of it was fair. The priest busting in on this man that only wanted the love of his life and convinced him that she would be damned if Dracula didn’t set her free. The final scene with Mina and Dracula is almost visceral with emotion, and you get the feeling that Dracula is completely and totally okay with sacrificing himself to free her of his curse. It isn’t fair, it’s sad, and i was a mess with it.