Henry O'Brien
The moment Radu Jude’s nearly three-hour magnum opus Dracula begins, there are depictions of the famed count using artificial intelligence. In the rapid-fire sequence, we see various ugly and bizarre images of the count that have that same sheen one can find on ChatGPT or other learning language models.
Jude, the Romanian director who has this film and Kontinental ‘25 at the 2025 New York Film Festival, shouldn’t even be considered a provocateur at this point. Rather, he should just be known as a troll. His brazenly funny Dracula film crosses a line into gross irresponsibility. But do not confuse this with having anything meaningful to say. Indeed, Jude’s pointed critique of AI in the moviemaking process extends to how humans have always used, for lack of a better word, Dracula-esque devices to suck up resources and exploit workers.
The film concerns an unnamed Romanian director who seeks the help of an artificial intelligence to help him complete his adaptation of Dracula. According to the gleefully stupid director, his film only got an 80% score at the studio’s test screenings, so he needs some assistance. What follows are 13 vignettes that are AI prompts that relate, in one way or another, to the Prince of Darkness.
Along with the vignette, there’s the director’s film we receive intermittent updates on. His picture (if you would even want to call it that) takes place in Transylvania and revolves around an impotent old man named Sandu (Gabriel Spahiu), who performs as Dracula, and his co-star (Oana Maria Zaharia), a niece who goes nameless. The two take part in a demeaning ceremony where they re-create the Dracula story, albeit being far more homoerotic than any film adaptation ever was, and have to face being caught by a mob of tourists as if it were Frankenstein (I personally think this was an intentionally stupid and comedic decision by Jude).
The comedic strengths of the film, however, lie within these vignettes, which have varying levels of relevance, AI, and length. They all tackle the Dracula story, but mainly how the legendary horror story, which doesn’t even come from a Romanian writer (Bram Stoker was Irish), gets re-told and commodified. Dracula has become a cottage industry both for the AI-dependent director and his characters.
Above all else, though, they are a laugh riot, with numerous mentions of genitalia animated by AI and intentionally butched adaptations of older Dracula movies. For example, the 1922 F.W. Murnau classic, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, is used in Jude’s film to promote crappy products. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 expressionistic version, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, becomes a collage of horrifyingly hilarious images that frequently resemble the title character less.
As Jude insists on showing more and more artificially-generated images, even using them as establishing shots within multiple Dracula stories, we start to wonder the efficacy of Jude’s critique. In a time when talent agencies are “circling” an AI actress, there’s plenty of legitimacy in feeling skeptical about Jude’s use of the technology to show how stupid the technology is.
But Jude, through his irresponsibility, taps into larger aspects of human behavior, as shown by his moral tales like Kontinental ‘25 or his entertainment critiques like his masterful Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. Even as Jude will be the first one to think of a penis joke, he also has a larger understanding of history, labor and how people make profits out of their culture. His Dracula serves as a history lesson on how humans and their systems can take advantage of one another, using the horror story more so as a framing device. AI is just the extension of this long history of exploitation.
With this being a Radu Jude film, however, there’s a zany and bloody vignette that cheekily hits the nail on the head that the Dracula story is a form of a Marxist fable. The unnamed director, who initially doesn’t seem like he has one creative iota in his body, even indicates this comparison is lazy. Jude leaves no meta stone unturned in the service of an insanely stupid and pointless joke that usually involves a penis.
Dracula truly is an overwhelming experience. Even if you are on Jude’s wavelength, which I can comfortably say I am, the sheer amount of crass jokes and AI images wears on you. And while that can be seen as a negative, it conversely cements Jude as the new and bold vulgar auteur of the 2020s. Maybe that terminology doesn’t work as much anymore; maybe Jude should just be seen as in the same vein as a sh*tposter.
