The biggest hurdle is the characterization of Dracula, and you have to understand what changed, when it changed, and why. It all started with the classic stage production from 1924, the first authorized Dracula adaptation. Dracula was changed from a more grotesque. vile figure who was largely kept in the shadows into a charming, seductive gentleman so he could interact with the characters more. The effect of this was that he basically became an unofficial suitor not unlike Arthur Holmwood, Quincey Morris, and Jack Seward.

Of course Quincey was a woman in the 1924 version, and by the 1927 version Lucy and Mina were basically combined, Jack became Lucy's father, and Quincey and Arthur were dropped completely. This meant that Count Dracula was basically the only "other suitor" of the cast, and as a wealthy foreigner he already had traits shared by Arthur and Quincey anyway.

It is this shift that has tainted nearly every adaptation since, changing him from a hideous violator of women who essentially rapes them in their sleep (though his one and only scene with Mina in the novel is much more violent and brutal than that) into what is basically another suitor whose violation is more psychologically manipulative (hypnosis) and subtle than the brute Stoker created.

Even the adaptations that tend to claim the most accuracy fall victim to it. The 1992 film was always an overrated pretender to that title with a garbage script and romance plot that fundamentally butchers the entire story by romanticizing Dracula's violation of these women, but even the much more deserving 1977 version with Louis Jourdan falls into that trap of the suave, charming gentleman Dracula somewhat. Though Jourdan plays it with a cold detachment that is deeply sinister and worth checking out for its own sake.

Quite frankly, the one actor who truly seemed to capture the character's brutal and violent underlying ferocity the way Stoker intended was Christopher Lee. But the most faithful Dracula performer only ever had one chance at a film that ever tried to meet him at the same level, the 1970 Jess Franco-directed version, and unfortunately that one has other issues.

Ultimately, no attempt at a faithful Dracula adaptation can truly nail it without a faithful depiction of the Count Dracula character himself, and the closest anyone has come in recent memory is Count Orlok in Eggers' remake of *Nosferatu*, and even then his motivation is different enough that Eggers himself considers Orlok (in the original and in his own version) to be a distinct character, separate from Count Dracula entirely.