Choppy Waters
Trust us, Dracula does indeed make an appearance on the ‘Demeter’.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
Director: André Øvredal • Writers: Bragi Schut Jr, Zak Olkewicz
Starring: Corey Hawkins, Liam Cunningham, Aisling Franciosi, David Dastmalchian, Woody Norman, Chris Walley, Jon Jon Briones, Javier Botet
UK / USA / Germany • 1hr 59mins
Opens Hong Kong October 26 • IIB
Grade: B
The Last Voyage of the Demeter isn’t a Dracula movie, per se. It’s more Dracula adjacent. Lifting a page from Renfield and, to a degree, Van Helsing (remember that?), Last Voyage zeroes in on a single, specific element from Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel and runs with it. In this case it’s “The Captain's Log”, “Cutting from the Dailygraph”, or simply Chapter 7 depending on your edition Dracula.
And you’ll have a hard time convincing me that the slightly unwieldy, too enigmatic title hasn’t had something to do with its relative failure at box offices where it’s managed a release. Too bad, really, because while it’s not going to fundamentally change the way we view art, Stoker’s text, vampire mythology or the basic tenets of cinema, it is a clever piece of haunted house filmmaking with stellar gothic horror visuals and atmosphere to burn, and a mean streak a mile wide that’s justified by the source material. The Demeter drifts into Whitby harbour in the book as a derelict ship, with nothing on board except the captain’s cryptic journal, with scribblings about his vanishing crew. The simple premises are often the most effective ones.
Doomed
We start with failed doctor Clemens (Corey Hawkins, In the Heights) stuck in Bulgaria with no way home to England, trying to hitch a ride with any boat going that way. He’s rejected by the Demeter’s first mate, Wojchek (David Dastmalchian, The Suicide Squad), because his fancy education is useless on a cargo ship – until Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham, Game of Thrones) accepts him after Clemens saves Eliot’s grandson Toby (Woody Norman) from a falling crate. Clemens earns his keep and then some when Anna (Aisling Franciosi, Jennifer Kent’s harrowing The Nightingale), a stowaway, is found in the hold. Woops. Women be bad luck on a ship, and shortly after that the voyage goes sideways: the food supply gets shredded, the crew starts disappearing or showing up zombiefied, and Anna’s grim purpose comes to light. Then, Dracula (Spain’s own Doug Jones, Javier Botet) shows up and shit gets real.
Norwegian director André Øvredal has been down this road before. First with his unapologetically goofy Troll Hunter, a found footage mockumentary about the secret Norwegian government ministry that keeps the country’s troll menace at bay, and then in The Autopsy of Jane Doe, which was… checks notes… a haunted house film about a coroner and his assistant trapped in the lab with a possibly undead subject. Øvredal is well practiced with mythological creatures and close quarters, single location creepiness, and it serves him well in Last Voyage.
Now, it’s obvious Last Voyage is going to get slapped with “Alien on a boat” labels, and there’s a bit of truth in that. It has the same kind of slow burn, simmering dread and rising panic as Ridley Scott’s film (the one directors have been aping since 1979), here completed with dark and stormy nights and creaking beams. But filmmakers have been copying Scott for 40 years for a reason: it works. Cinematographer Tom Stern (The Meg) keeps the camera steady, so steady it generates a great deal of the tension, and production designer Edward Thomas (Torchwood) bathes the ship – also a character – with musty smelling sails and ropes that hide Drac’s rot. The ship shows up in Whitby empty; no one is safe, so kudos to co-writers Bragi Schut Jr and Zak Olkewicz for managing to make a foregone conclusion mysterious nonetheless.
They could have done more with the characters conjured out of thin air; the crew in the book are unnamed. Clemens is relatively fleshed out, but the rest are sketches. Cunningham can do crusty ol’ salt in his sleep, and his presence alone gives Eliot a personality. The surprise is probably Dastmalchian, not doing psychotic and weird for a change and making the most of it. But it’s Botet, under ace prosthetics, that steals the show. This Dracula is more Midnight Mass and Nosferatu than sexy beast, and you’d swear he’s grinning under all that latex. Truly, he’s the only character that counts. The Last Voyage of the Demeter is about, er, uh, the voyage, not the destination. — DEK
*The Last Voyage of the Demeter was reviewed during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labour of the actors it wouldn't exist.