Night falls, and the wolves howl. An enchanting scent wafts through the streets of Paris. Dracula is here, and no one is safe… unfortunately, neither is the audience.

The adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” from director Luc Besson (“Leon: the Professional,” “The Fifth Element”) hit American theaters on Feb. 6 to a tepid response.

“Dracula” follows Vlad, a prince who renounces God and is cursed by vampirism, on a quest to find the reincarnated love of his life 400 years after her death.

The movie is rife with problems. The script is messy, the acting is inconsistent, the editing is choppy and the direction is confused. “Dracula” suffers from a serious identity crisis.

‘Totally Romantic’

Besson’s “Dracula” begins as a bizarre 15th-century romance. The audience is introduced to Vlad and his wife Elisabeta through a series of messily edited shots of them making out. The intended effect is to demonstrate that the couple is madly in love, but it fails at that immediately. Their love is hard to see, but their lust is extremely apparent.

Vlad is dragged off to claim victory on the battlefield, and Elisabeta is sent away for her safety. Despite his victory, Elisabeta dies, Vlad kills the Pope, denounces God and becomes a vampire.

The first 15 minutes of “Dracula” feel rushed. The beginning of the movie is meant to set the table for the rest of the story, but it doesn’t give itself the time to. Instead of something important, it feels like a tacked-on sequence for most of the movie.

As the love story expands throughout the movie, boredom overtakes any interest that was held on through the opening 15 minutes. Vlad spends centuries searching for the reincarnation of his dead wife, a tale which he tells to Jonathan Harker, a solicitor there to negotiate a real estate deal with him.

Vlad stumbles upon a photo of Harker’s fiancée, Nina, who just so happens to be the spitting image of his lost love. Vlad goes to Paris to find Nina, and the movie seems to insist upon the importance of their relationship. 

I didn’t care at all.

The first act failed to persuade me that their love was worth investing in. By the time Elisabeta dies, she’s had less than 10 minutes of screen time. It’s hard to care about her and Vlad’s relationship because they’re hardly characters. So, when its necessity to the plot is stated to me as an audience member, I just rolled my eyes.

“It’s a totally romantic approach,” Besson told Deadline of his adaptation. “There’s a romantic side in Bram Stoker’s book that hasn’t been explored that much.”

This romance is meant to be the film’s core, but that’s a key failure of the movie. Besson does very little to make the audience care.

A man of the cloth

Following the opening the audience is presented with the highlight of the movie: Christoph Walz as the Priest. Walz is simply an actor whose charm knows no bounds. He is seemingly unable to deliver a bad performance.

The Priest, who’s a clear stand-in for Dracula’s antagonist in the novel Van Helsing, is called in to help with a confounding medical case: a woman afflicted with something that the doctors cannot diagnose. The solution isn’t found in science; it’s found in the supernatural. The woman, Maria, is a vampire.

Despite the failings of the film, “Dracula” gives a platform for Walz to be a great performer, and he takes full advantage of that platform. The scene of him diagnosing Maria as a vampire is just entertainment in its purest form.

Matilda De Angelis, Maria’s actress, plays well against Walz. Their scenes together are really fun and truly the movie’s highlight.

The power of acting

On top of Besson’s failings, Vlad’s actor and the film’s lead, Caleb Landry Jones, gives a dreadfully boring performance as the titular character. Jones isn’t unique in his quality of performance either. Jonathan Harker’s actor, Ewens Abid, doesn’t do much to earn his time on screen.

Zoë Bleu delivers a standout performance as Elisabeta/Nina. She plays the two differently in cool, subtle ways, but the difference becomes blurred as time goes on. Nina begins much more uptight, which is starkly contrasted by Elisabeta’s very outgoing and playful attitude.

Once Nina meets Vlad, she begins to resemble Elisabeta more and more until the difference between the two disappears.

Although she’s acting against Jones, who is delivering an empty performance, she manages to make the most of her dual role. I hope to see Bleu get some larger, and perhaps better, roles in the future.

Pales in comparison

When criticizing “Dracula,” it’s important to note the climate in which it’s coming out. There’s a notable resurgence in new adaptations of classic horror novels. Some strive for an accuracy lacking in previous adaptations, others intend to provide a more modern take on their source material.

Leigh Whannel’s “Invisible Man” and “Wolf-Man” and Guillermo Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” are some good examples of this phenomenon, but Robert Eggers’s “Nosferatu” is the most comparable to Besson’s “Dracula.”

Both movies are adapting the original “Dracula” novel, but to varying degrees of success.

Eggers’ take on the source material was dripping with his own strange style. I personally adored his “Nosferatu” and found myself thinking that Besson’s “Dracula” felt like the lesser version of it.

It hits so many of the same beats, but Besson’s take was bland. There was nothing interesting in his “Dracula” that hadn’t been done better before.

Besson’s take on the novel also suffers from the fact that it’s the newest in a long line of successful adaptations.

He sought to bring something new and interesting with the focus on romance, but the romance was the most dull part of the movie. So, what’s left over is a couple good things, like Walz and Bleu, but mostly a bland movie that’s been done better before.