Why the 1992 Dracula Still Haunts Me After Watching the 2025 Remake

Today I finally sat down to watch Luc Besson’s Dracula: A Love Tale.

I walked in with a lot of curiosity. We’ve seen the Count reimagined a thousand times, but from the opening frames, I found myself pulled in by the texture of it. The cinematography is genuinely stunning—there’s a richness to the 35mm film that makes the whole thing feel like a dark, moving painting. It’s lavish and moody, with a painterly quality that reminded me of the Flemish masters.

But the real surprise for me was Caleb Landry Jones.

There is a specific energy he brings to the screen that I can only describe as "humanly broken." He doesn't play Dracula as a distant monster or a smooth seducer; he plays him as a man rotting from the inside out. It’s a performance that feels incredibly modern and relatable. We see the grief before we see the fangs. As a filmmaker, I love it when an actor isn't afraid to look weak, and Jones leans into that vulnerability in a way that really worked for me.

The Core Difference: The Subject vs. The Observer

Ultimately, both films are wonderful, but they tell the same story through two completely different lenses.

2025 is Dracula’s movie. It’s told from the perspective of the Count himself—we are inside his anger, his sorrow, and his centuries-long isolation. He is the protagonist of his own tragedy.

1992 is Harker’s reflection on Dracula. Even with the romance, we are mainly seeing the Count through the eyes of the outsiders—the journals, the letters, and the horror of Jonathan’s encounter. Coppola gives us a legendary figure as seen by mortals; Besson gives us the man behind the legend.

Where It Breaks: Cool shots vs narrative logic

This is where the film starts to crack for me. I totally understand Besson's approach; by centering the story on Dracula’s internal POV, the film takes on a dreamlike quality. It feels like a fracture of memories—vivid, emotional, and sensory.

However, this dreamlike execution causes too much narrative logic to be lost. While the "cool shots" are breathtaking, they often come at the expense of the story’s connective tissue. It begins to feel like a disjointed music video—a collection of high-fashion moments that lack causality:

• The Geography: Characters seem to "teleport" between Romania and France with no sense of the grueling journey. There is even a shot implying a land border between the two, which took me right out of the film.

  
  

• The "Perfume": The subplot about a magical scent entrancing the masses feels like a forced chemical shortcut for vampiric charisma—a plot device rather than lore.

  
  

• The Gargoyle Army: The reveal of kidnapped children turned into sentient gargoyles is a striking image, but it has zero explanation. It feels like it belongs in a dark fantasy epic, not this intimate character study.

  
  

In the 1992 film, even when the logic was "operatic," it felt consistent. In A Love Tale, the narrative is often forced just to get to the next beautiful set-piece. It demands you look, but forbids you from asking "Why?"

The Climax: Grand Tragedy vs. Quiet Release

The endings really solidified my feelings. The 1992 finale is etched in my brain—it’s an epic, high-speed chase that feels massive and desperate. It’s physical, it’s loud, and it earns its grandiosity. Coppola gave us a spectacle that matched the weight of a 400-year-old curse.

By comparison, the 2025 ending felt a little rushed. I can see what Besson was aiming for—giving the Count a "spiritually redemptive" send-off fitting for a tragic hero. But as a viewer, I felt a bit left behind. I wanted that final surge of adrenaline. Instead, it just... faded out.

The Verdict

I’m glad I watched A Love Tale. It is a fascinating character study of grief, and I genuinely love Besson’s approach of framing Dracula as the protagonist rather than the monster.

If Besson hadn't forced the story—if he had let the plot breathe instead of chasing the next visual high—this would have easily been my favorite Dracula movie of all time. The potential was there, and the "humanly broken" performance was there. But in the end, the 1992 version remains the masterpiece because it marries that emotion with a world that actually makes sense.

Sometimes, you just need the grand opera to truly hear the music.

How about you? Do you prefer the "Subject" perspective of Dracula’s personal sorrow, or the "Observer" perspective of the classic 90s version? Let me know in the comments.

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