Luc Besson’s ‘Dracula’ Makes Bold Case For Christianity in A Pagan Vampire Era
(REVIEW) Evil vampires are really back in vogue now. After ages of “Twilight” and “Vampire Diaries” content turned these bloodsuckers into hot antiheroes, modern vampires have moved back to horror. We got a remake of “Salem’s Lot,” Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” gained critical and box office success and Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” became a box office hit, critical hit and the most Oscar-nominated film in history.
But Luc Besson’s new “Dracula” film is unique among these entries. While Christianity has always been connected to vampire lore, few have been so explicit as this one. Particularly when compared to new films like “Sinners,” which repudiate Christianity in favor of paganism.
“Dracula” follows a 15th-century prince (played by Caleb Landry Jones) who denounces God after the devastating loss of his wife (Zoe Bleu). When he does, he inherits an eternal curse and becomes Dracula. Condemned to wander the centuries, he defies fate and death, guided by the hope of being reunited with his lost love, leaving a trail of death and enslavement in his wake. When he believes he’s found his love reincarnated, he has to face off against her fiancé (Ewins Abid) and a priest (Christoph Waltz) who has sworn to hunt him down.
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The latest adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic work has gotten mixed reviews. (As of now it has a 54% critics score and 80% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes). People note the film somehow feels both absolutely bonkers and highly derivative, particularly of Francis Ford Coppola’s own adaptation of the novel.
Both Coppola and Besson’s adaptations feature Dracula as a Medieval noble fighting in the Crusades who becomes a vampire by blaspheming God after the death of his wife and then targets Mina because he thinks she’s his reincarnated wife. But unlike that film, this one includes its own bizarre elements. Like a love potion that causes people to fall under Dracula’s spell rather than his own powers for some reason.
But if “Dracula” is a glorified remake of Coppola’s version, it also improves on some of its weaknesses. While Coppola’s film becomes increasingly convoluted and contrived as it goes on, Besson keeps his madness fairly streamlined. Besson doesn’t try to have it both ways with Mina being both Elesabeta and not Elisabeta for example. She just is. The film also manages to combine fairly neatly its tones of action/adventure, horror, romance and camp together rather than switching back and forth between them.
But the strongest change is easily just how Christian the film is. Hollywood increasingly portrays pagan spirituality as good and powerful, but Christianity and religion as evil. This has trickled down to vampires. “Salem’s Lot” portrayed Christianity as powerful sometimes against the vampires, but ultimately impotent. “Nosferatu” was a clash between scientific rationalism and broad-based superstition. The Van Helsing stand in Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) argued, “We have not been so enlightened as blinded by the gracious light of science!”
A grab bag of traditional and made-up Christian and pagan folk practices were used to explain and defeat the vampire. “Sinners” rejected both pure materialism and Christian religion in favor of supposedly indigenous Black folk spiritual practices. Guns weren’t enough to beat the vampires; and prayers couldn’t defeat them either. They needed their hoodoo expert Annie to guide them to defeat them with the non-Christian assortment of traditional vampire rules and weaknesses.
But in “Dracula,” it’s Christianity that forms the worldview the vampires live in, and it’s Christianity that holds the only key to Dracula’s defeat. Dracula was a warrior commissioned by the Catholic Church to fight the Muslim invaders threatening Christendom. When his wife is killed — that despite his prayers — he blames God and blasphemes him. So God curses him to wander the earth for eternity. Dracula and others repeatedly reference the fact that Dracula is damned because of God, and pursues his wife (who he expects may be reincarnated someday) in defiance of God. Particularly as he makes multiple women his slaves through his love potions and turns them into vampires to help him search for his wife.
One of the most twisted — and arguably blasphemous — moments in the film is when Dracula, to regain his youth, goes to a nunnery and seduces every one inside who throws themselves on him to become his vampire slaves. This is portrayed very much as a middle finger to God.
What makes this film especially unique is how much it emphasizes the heroic priest at the center of the story. Christoph Waltz as the priest — this film’s “Van Helsing” character — is easily the most fun part of the film. Waltz brings his trademark casual dry sardonism to the character that evokes someone deeply familiar with the world of the occult and demonic, who treats the whole thing like a science. And yet, he clearly has a deep reverence for his faith. This mix of tones that Waltz does so effortlessly makes the priest a standout in a world of cinematic ministers.
This priest status can’t be overlooked. In most adaptations of Dracula, Van Helsing is a general expert on vampires and such beasts. He often believes in God and uses crucifixes as weapons against vampires. But faith is typically downplayed. In “Dracula,” he is explicitly a Catholic priest, and only referred to as such. The priest constantly talks of God as real, the church as good and the problem with the world as men who rebel against God rather than those who obey Him.
Dracula says once to the priest that he was killed in God’s name. But the priest retorts that “we live and breathe in his name,” so why should he want us to kill each other? Men kill in their own name. And you still are.”
There is one main thing that prevents this movie from essentially being a full-on faith-based film in vampire clothing. And that’s the issue of reincarnation. It’s taken for granted in the story that Mina is the reincarnated Elizabeth because, as Dracula notes, some pure souls can be reincarnated after death. Reincarnation is completely foreign to all Christian doctrine.
This gives a ding to the film’s uniqueness. The different thing about the movie is the fact that it combines such a bonkers film and vampire lore with such a stark and cohesive Catholic worldview. In such a world, it’s the priest who would raise an eyebrow at how church teaching has been so wildly wrong if reincarnation was a thing. But it never even comes up. If they had found a workaround that kept the story in line with traditional Christian views, it would have added up to something rather rare in the library of Dracula adaptations.
For most Dracula fans, this latest outing will be both too bizarre and too familiar to be stacked up to the best adaptations. But to the viewers of faith, “Dracula” has something few others have: A version of the story that embraces Christianity as true, beautiful and central to its world, themes and characters. If it had just gone all the way with it, this film might have been remembered fondly not just in the canon of Dracula adaptations, but Christian films as well.
“Dracula” is playing in theaters now.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.