Luc Besson’s “Dracula” is pretty much like everybody else’s “Dracula.”

Our Eastern European prince — played by Caleb Landry Jones — is dolled up in the style of Francis Ford Coppola’s ’92 take on “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”

There’s a Mina (Zoë Bleu), the object of our blood-sucking vampire’ obsession. She has her realtor fiance Jonathan (Ewens Abid), but the toothsome seducer is not to be denied.

And there’s a vampire hunter, in this case an unnnamed priest (Christoph Waltz) who sounds like a “Van Helsing” even if we never hear his name.

“You know my desires,” a fetching vampire (Matilda De Angelis) purrs to her crucifixed interrogator.

“I know your needs,” the priest purrs back, offering a her little hemoglobin in liquid form.

The director of “The Fifth Element,” “La Femme Nikita” and “Lucy” adds an origin story/prologue to the tale, taking us back to the Middle Ages where our warrior count butchers invading Ottoman Turks and accidentally kills his beloved wife (Bleu again). He vows to get her back, murders an archbishop whose prayers didn’t save her and is thus cursed to search and “turn” others to search for him as he piles up riches and waits for centuries for Lisabeth’s reincarnation.

But other than some “Excalibur” over-decorated and gruesomely bloodied armor, a few interesting moments of period detail over the centuries and the odd anachronism, this “Dracula” — titled “A Love Story” in Europe — has little to recommend it.

The lumbering narrative never staggers to its feet for a suspenseful sprint. It’s ponderous. But as it was financed, set and filmed in Europe with a lot of nubile unknown female necks to be nibbled, which has long been Besson’s calling card, there is that.

Jones, star of Besson’s “Dogman,” has little about him that suggests aristocratic, dashing “gentleman,” which is how his character is supposed to come off when his retinue of vampires discover the new Lisabeth in 1889 Paris, just as the French Revolution’s centennial is being celebrated. Jones reaches for “soulful” a couple of times. But all the slaughtering of Muslims, vampire hunters and the young, the pretty and the innocent buries that.

One is tempted to call this brooding, self-serving and impulsive Dracula a “generation appropriate” version. He’s doing his sit-ups. But matinee idol Draculas of the Frank Langella variety are a thing of the cinematic past, or so it would appear.

We get to watch Vlad bite/slaughter his way through the 17th century French court and a 19th century convent — scenes filmed as blood-spraying orgies. But the lip service the script pays to obsessive, passionate “undying” love is just that — lip service before the fangs come back out.

Vlad the Impaler’s “familiars” here — his non-vampiric assistants — are a legion of unspeaking stone gargoyles brought to CGI animated life. Cute. But I prefer just one speaking, cowering, “Yes, Master!” “Renfield,” myself

This “Dracula” is somehow somewhat better than the worst versions of the tale we’ve seen in recent decades, but a few bites short of adequate or anything approaching Coppola’s ’90s film or Robert Eggers’ gorgeous and stark “Nosferatu.”

Rating: R, graphic, gruesome violence, sexual situations

Cast: Caleb Landry Jones,
Zoë Bleu, Matilda De Angelis. Guillaume de Tonquédec, Thalia Besson, Ewens Abid and Christoph Waltz.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Luc Besson, based on the novel by Bram Stoker. A Vertical release.

Running time: 2:09