With the new year came a new Dracula film. While I did enjoy watching it, I couldn’t ignore the familiar themes that left me feeling a little let down by the time the credits rolled.
With the original Bram Stokerās Dracula (1992), Nosferatu (2024), and the 2026 Dracula: A Love Tale, what’s meant to be a story of eternal love and devotion repeatedly turns into a curse for the women caught in the vampire’s gaze. I went into the 2026 adaptation hoping for a fresh perspective, an interpretation where women could exercise real choice and where agency mattered. Instead, even this new retelling keeps the theme of female spectacle, their power constantly mediated through the male gaze rather than their own decisions.
Though the story frames it as true love, those lines blur dangerously when it comes to the romanticization of the eternal. What’s displayed as poetic masks a darker truth: Draculaās desire is far deadlier than his thirst for blood.
Trapped in His Story
Dracula: A Love Tale (2026), directed by Luc Besso, certainly sets itself apart from the 1992 Bram Stokerās Dracula. While previous re-imaginings leaned heavily into gothic horror, this adaptation dials back the terror to focus on Count Draculaās tragic love story. I loved seeing the classic horror tale reimagined as a sweeping romance. I believe Vlad IIās (later known as Count Dracula) relentless quest across the world to find the reincarnation of his lost betrothed is as heartrending as it is epic.
As captivating as Vlad IIās quest was, it was also unsettling, revealing that, strangely, the romance itself carried its own kind of horror. The idea of eternal devotion, while romantic on the surface, casts a shadow over the women caught in Draculaās orbit. Elisabeta/Mina’s reincarnation isnāt just the object of his love; she becomes a symbol of inevitability and possession, her life entwined with his in ways she never chose. What feels like a sweeping love story is a deeper power dynamic centered around obsession, control, and the weight of being the focal point of immortal desire. In transforming the horror tale into a romance, Besso doesnāt erase the danger, but dresses it differently, making the emotional stakes as chilling as the physical ones.
Vlad II’s dedication to Elisabeta feels undeniably genuine, a love between two souls seemingly destined for each other. And yet, the story undercuts that purity in a shocking way: Draculaās own actions directly cause her death. While he fights the Ottoman forces, intending to protect her, his attempt goes tragically awry ā he hurls the sword meant to stop her attacker, only to impale both of them. In an instant, what should have been a heroic rescue becomes a haunting reminder of how even the most passionate devotion can have devastating consequences.
All the declarations of love and the chemistry between Vlad II and Mina, who is Elisabeta’s soul reincarnated, end up overshadowing her lack of agency. Her destiny feels predetermined, as if sheās a passive observer in her own life. She barely speaks before being devoted to Vlad IIābetrothed, swept up in memories and music that once belonged to him and Elisabetaāher own identity erased almost instantly. I wanted to see her fight for her personhood, yet as an audience member, I only experienced her through the male gaze, disconnected from her life before him. Even her one meaningful connection with Maria, Vlad IIās vampire disciple, is entangled in his designs, and his choice of turning women into disciples further strips female characters of autonomy. In the end, the sweeping romance feeds Vlad II in more ways than one and ultimately serves his power and desire, leaving the womenās voices, choices, and lives subordinated to male gain.
Under his shadow
No matter the era or adaptation, the leading ladies in Dracula rarely steer their own destinies. Mina, Lucy, and Ellen are swept up in the obsessions, desires, and sexual fantasies of powerful men, their choices erased or ignored. It’s just sad to see that some of the most well-loved romantic filmography hold firm on the notion that women’s fates must be burned in the process in the name of love. Why choose love that is equal, kind, fair, healthy, genuine, and balanced when you can glorify devotion that consumes?
I think this extends beyond the screen. As a society, we fall in love with these films, place them on a pedestal, and buy into the fantasy of all-consuming passion, lust, and head-over-heels intensity. However, when we romanticize love as something that overwhelms rather than sustains, it can become dangerously misleading.
Draculaās world continues to thrill, terrify, and captivate, but it also consistently reminds us whose narrative drives the plot, and whose experience remains invisible. With every retelling, the spectacle changes, but the erasure of female autonomy remains, and that is the pattern that refuses to die.