Roger Ebert awarded the film 3/4 stars, writing, "I enjoyed the movie simply for the way it looked and felt. Production designers Dante Ferretti and Thomas Sanders have outdone themselves. The cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, gets into the spirit so completely he always seems to light with shadows." Ebert did, however, voice criticisms over the film's "narrative confusions and dead ends". Jonathan Rosenbaum said the film suffered from a "somewhat dispersed and overcrowded story line" but that it "remains fascinating and often affecting thanks to all its visual and conceptual energy." Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" called the film "not particularly scary, not very sexy and dramatically over the top", criticizing the tone and several of the casting decisions. Tom Hibbert of "Empire" was unimpressed. Awarding the film 2/5 stars, he said, "Has a film ever promised so much yet delivered so little?...all we're left with is an overly long bloated adaptation, instead of what might have been a gothic masterpiece." Geoffrey O'Brien of "The New York Review of Books" also had reservations: "romantic make-over of "Dracula" registers as little more than a marketing device designed to exploit the attractiveness of the movie's youthful cast...[it rolls on a patina of the 'feel-good' uplift endemic in recent Hollywood movies."