Bram Stoker’s Dracula audiobook review – cinematic horror with an A-list cast

Jonathan Bailey, Ella Purnell, Aimee-Lou Wood, Maggie Gyllenhaal and more bring shock and gore to an immersive retelling with real bite

Do we really need another retelling of Bram Stoker’s fabled horror novel, which has already yielded multiple films, plays and radio dramas? Perhaps not, but this new audio version of Dracula, directed by Mary Lambert and adapted by Robyn Aherne, justifies its existence with an unusually star-studded cast, a streamlined story and an immersive and frequently nightmarish sound palette.

Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey is smooth and charismatic as the eponymous count who invites a young solicitor, Jonathan Harker (Louis Partridge), to his castle in Transylvania to assist him with the sale of a property. There, Harker becomes increasingly uneasy as he glimpses the count’s diabolical powers and realises that he is, in fact, a prisoner.

Meanwhile, there are strange goings-on in Whitby, England, where Jonathan’s fiancee Mina (Ella Purnell) is visiting her friend Lucy (Aimee Lou Wood). Shortly after a Russian ship is found wrecked on the shore with its captain murdered and its crew nowhere to be seen, Lucy has an unusual encounter in a graveyard that leaves her with puncture wounds on her throat and prone to night terrors. David Jonsson plays the doctor who tends to Lucy, while Maggie Gyllenhaal is brilliantly cast as garlic-wielding vampire hunter Van Helsing.

This adaptation comes with a haunting score by Ilan Eshkeri and cinematic sound that plunges the listener into Dracula’s castle with its disembodied voices and echoing corridors (this is a series best heard via headphones). It doesn’t shrink from the shock and gore, either, even though the blood-sucking scenes are done sparingly and without a hint of camp.

Available via Audible Originals, 5hr 57min

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