‘Dracula’ Review: Radu Jude Stakes the Myth Through Absurdity

It’s probably safe to say that, for a Romanian, making a movie about Dracula is a particularly tricky business. How do you do it—from the very country that birthed the legend, and that’s seen it milked dry from every possible angle—without repeating or parodying everything that’s already been done? Is there anything left to discover or reinvent? Radu Jude, ever the acid-tongued, ironic, and inventive filmmaker, decided to take the challenge in the most playful and irreverent way possible: a deconstruction of the myth through ridicule and absurdity. His Dracula feels like a film made against the very audience that would go see a movie about the Count—a sort of trash-cinema parody that doubles as a reflection on everything that the figure of Dracula represents and inspires.

In what’s possibly the most confrontational and deliberately ugly film of his career, the director of Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World gathers his usual troupe of actors and collaborators to present something that’s best described as a patchwork of sketches and parodies about Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Count Dracula. The film unfolds along two main threads over the course of almost three sometimes punishing hours. One involves a filmmaker—essentially Jude’s alter ego—who introduces each short while explaining that, due to budget constraints, he had to shoot much of it using generative AI. This AI keeps suggesting “commercial” ideas—ones he’d never think of himself—ideas that must include “blood, sex, humor,” all those things “people like.”

Among the many sketches, one (well, actually two) stands out. In a themed bar somewhere in Transylvania, a delirious stage play about Dracula unfolds, featuring sex between the Count and whichever audience member is willing to pay a fortune for the experience—culminating in a chaotic chase through the village streets. Focusing on the aging actor who plays Dracula and the young woman (Mina, within the fiction inside the fiction) who performs with him, Jude follows the misadventures of two cabaret performers scraping by by exploiting gullible tourists—until, one day, they’ve had enough and decide to run away.

The film then returns to the “presenter,” who introduces a dozen shorts—many built around grotesque AI-generated imagery—that mix the Dracula legend with all sorts of tangents: video games, worker exploitation, fake amusement parks, Hollywood’s endless remakes, and, less successfully, a 45-minute detour involving a philosophy student, a woman from the countryside, and a Muppet-like version of the famous vampire. These vignettes are made in an even more unhinged style than Jude’s usual, combining crude, sexual humor with refined references that range from high culture to Romanian politics, world wars, classical music, and national literature. Some of the verbal jokes land beautifully; others, especially the visual ones, lean toward the kind of parody you’d find on social media. (One segment is literally called Dracula’s TikTok.)

Between deconstruction and parody, between a big “fuck you” to those expecting an elegant, polished retelling of Romania’s most overexploited story and a test of patience for anyone who dares watch it, Radu Jude’s Dracula is an exercise in excess, a creative tantrum from a filmmaker using the myth as a dumping ground for ideas—and throwing them all, indiscriminately, at the audience’s head. Some of them hit, many don’t, and most of the time you get the feeling the director is pulling a bit of a prank on his viewers—especially through the relentless use of AI-generated imagery that manages to uglify everything it touches, even in a film that’s deliberately “ugly.” In a way, Jude seems hellbent on ruining the audience’s experience just to make them stop obsessing about Dracula.

There are, of course, other ways to read the Romanian filmmaker’s intentions. In his anarchic, defiant fashion, Jude’s Dracula can be seen as a reflection on contemporary cinema—a caustic look at that gray area where arthouse and commercial filmmaking (the so-called “elevated horror,” for instance) blur together while conveniently ignoring the sociopolitical and economic forces behind their stories. Between jokes about erect penises sprouting from trees, dentists named Caligari trying to pull out the Count’s fangs, and commercials willing to sell anything under the name Nosferatu, Jude spends three hours firing sharp arrows at religion, tourist exploitation, contemporary cinema, the AI industry, the world’s pathetic leaders, and a country that can’t stop selling a fake version of itself for the rest of the world to consume.