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Werner Herzog’s remake of F.W. Murnau’s silent classic isn’t interested in telling an accurate version of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA, nor a straight remake of Murnau’s shadowy vampire masterpiece. Herzog takes the plot of the 1922 film, the character names from the novel then adds his own plot twists and jumbles them all up. What he produces is a horror film is the classic sense of the term, and leaves us haunted and disturbed.

Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz, DOWNFALL) is set to travel to Transylvania to sell Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski, AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD) a house in Germany. His wife Lucy (DRACULA purists must get over the name flops), played by the gorgeous Isabelle Adjani (ISHTAR), doesn’t want him to go, because she has a foreboding feeling. Harker’s travels to see the Count are long and arduous. When he meets Dracula, he finds himself in the presence of a rat-like man whose ghostly skin is almost as unsettling as his strange behavior. When the vampire sees a picture of Harker’s wife, he signs the deal right away. There is a wonderful dinner awaiting him in Wismar.

Herzog paces and composes the film like an art project. The slowness and the eerie images create nervousness in the audience. It’s not scary, but off-putting, much like the feeling one gets from the dream sequences in an Ingmar Bergman film. And like a Bergman film, the stranger the imagery gets, the more haunting the film becomes.

On a grand scale Jonathan is a pawn between the battle between the evil Count and the good Lucy. Dracula’s pale skin evokes images of death and decay, while Lucy’s snow white complexion brings to mind purity. Once Dracula comes to England, Herzog departs from Murnau and transforms the vampire into a force of nature. In one bizarre scene, Lucy stumbles upon a dinner party in the middle of the street as plague-infected rat surround them. They say they too have the plague and this is their last supper.

Kinski is intense as the Count. From his look to his mannerisms, he inhabited the creature as an age-old force of nature, bored with existence, but driven by uncontrollable desires. Ganz makes Harker sympathetic, but not a hero. Adjani, however, does make Lucy a hero. Her dedication to her husband is touching and she gives her character a mix of innocence and bravery that is seductive.

Some criticize the long sequence where Jonathan travels to the Count’s castle. The imagery is strange and provocative, and the music builds to a bombastic finale. As I said before Harker’s trip is long and arduous, but isn’t that how life feels sometimes? And what does Harker find at the end of his journey? The answer to this question is key to Herzog’s final story change at the very end. It’s a bold, darkly ironic move and a brilliant one. A Herzog horror film is certainly not going to have a happy ending.

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