It is pretty faithful to the narrative in the book and even makes reference to the diaries, but there are a number of changes:
- The film starts with legend of Vlad the impaler which is not in the book
- Renfield is a lawyer, who had been working on the property transaction before Harker.
- Character of Dracula is less threatening initially in the book than in the film, where the vampire explantion is more overt from the beginning (I suppose because film goers won't find it a surprise).
- Draculas ownership of Carfax Abbey is stated early on in the film rather than it being a surprise later in the book that it is next to the asylum.
- Dracula has a shadow that operates seperately from his body movements in the film.
- The carriage driver is not revealed as Dracula at any point
- Mina and Lucy do not stay in Whitby and none of the action is set in Whitby.
- Seward suggests a larger animal like a cat to Renfield, but in the book Seward is slightly bemused by Sewards request.
- Shaving incident is not as in the book, the book only has no reflection in the mirror,
- The baby is given to the female vampires not in a bag, thus making it require less imagination.
- The female vampires are not described as being like Dracula physically which removes the incest angle.
- Seward is injecting himself with morphine.
- Dracula appears as a wolf rather than the wolf escaping from the zoo being controlled by him which is not in the book
- The wolf still escapes from the zoo but it seems to be poseessed by Dracula
- The ship Demeter does not wash up at Whitby with a dead man lashed to the wheel
- Lucy is more aware of what has happened to her earlier on rather than it being dream like.
- She does not seem very ill comopared to the description in the book.
- Dracula only appears as a bat briefly at the end of the film in the abbey scene, not at the windows of the house.
- Dracula seeks out Mina rather than him being spotted and not wanting to be discovered.
- There is a theme of love in the film associated with Vlads wife killing herself which is not in the book
- Scene in the cinema and the entire relationship between Dracula and Lucy is not in book
- Lucy's mother does not appear in the film and does not die
- No communion wafer for cleansing the boxes of earth, holy water used instead.
- The undead Lucy does not attack children in the park, and seems to have abducted a sleeping child.
- Search for the boxes does not happen in the film.
- Renfield does not plead to be allowed out.
- Ship to Transylvania does not divert
- Burnig with wafer takes place in Transylvania rather than before the journey.
- Mina trying to save Dracula is not in the book.
- The vampires do not turn to dust when their heads are severed.
- Dracula transforms into rats
