Luc Besson has said he’s “not a fan of horror films, nor of Dracula,” and his version of the story is now streaming on Paramount+. Besson’s take drops the fog and leans all the way into doomed romance.
Caleb Landry Jones plays a 15th-century prince who renounces God after his wife is murdered, gets cursed with eternal life, and spends roughly 400 years hunting her reincarnation, landing in 1889 Paris where he finds her as Mina, already engaged to Jonathan Harker. Christoph Waltz plays the priest hunting him.
If that setup sounds like Coppola’s 1992 version, that’s the lane. The reincarnated-wife plot isn’t from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel at all.
Besson, who wrote and directed, has said he’s “not a fan of horror films, nor of Dracula,” and it shows: this is romance first, with a homemade perfume that makes Dracula irresistible, CGI gargoyle servants, a convent of swooning nuns, and Danny Elfman’s score behind all of it.
Critics split hard. The film sits at 54% on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus credits Jones’s “haunting lead performance” but dings the “inconsistent tone.”
The Hollywood Reporter summed it up as “Packs more bodices than bite.” Horror outlet Dread Central went 2.5 out of 5, calling it a glossy picture that “forgets why the monster and his love was ever dangerous in the first place.”
Audiences have been kinder, with an 82% Popcornmeter from more than 1,000 ratings, and Jones’s oddball, sympathetic Count is the thing most fans point to. The R-rated film runs about 129 minutes.
It opened in France in July 2025 and hit North American theaters in February 2026, with a VOD release following in March. The Paramount+ arrival is its subscription streaming debut, dropped into the service’s Peak Screaming collection for Halloween. It’s also still available to rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home.
