I think ever since Bram Stoker’s book Dracula was released, it has had a hold on our imaginations. We’ve seen so many interpretations and retelling stories using this character and also that of the vampire. We’ve seen the main story told so many times that it’s hard to really find a new way or point of view into the Dracula narrative without doing something completely new. Now this film, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, takes this small part of the larger story to tell an intimate, closed-space horror story. The Demeter is the boat that Dracula ships himself to England on, and it’s a very small part of the story told as a captain’s log. In this section expansion, Corey Hawkins plays a man named Clemons on the ship. A doctor with a mysterious past. Liam Cunningham plays Captain Elliot, the captain of the ship. Woody Norman plays the captain’s grandson Toby. Workman actor David Dastmalchian plays Wojchek, the first mate.
Stefan Kapičić gets to not be a CG Colossus as Olgaren, one of the ship’s crew. There’s not much to give an overview of plot-wise. A crew is stuck on a ship with a hungry Dracula. With the crew being picked off one by one. The film starts at the ending with people finding the empty crashed ship, shocked by the horrific scene they see in the wreckage. The cast works well together, and I really enjoyed the lighting in the film. The use of the close-ups and keeping the closed and cramped spacing of the ship added to the atmosphere and tension. Javier Botet plays Dracula, who is shown more as a complete monster than anything human, like how we usually see the character. The design is more in line with Nosferatu than even designs in the De Palma film or stuff you might’ve seen in a Castlevania game. He stalks and looks monstrous and reminds me of a creature in a Resident Evil game (not those wack movies). The film feels like a survival horror game with Hawkins as our hero.
The film is very straightforward with what it’s doing and with the story, and things change once they find Anna, played by Aisling Franciosi. Her basically being Dracula’s pack-in lunch that got found pushes things to a more dangerous place. The effects and makeup on the attacks and kills are very good. The vampire burying in the sun is also a very, very effective and pretty shocking way of executing it on screen. I feel I like this movie more than most, and it feels like something that worked well in the theater. It was easy to follow and piqued my interest in something I haven’t seen from a Dracula story. For me, that’s a successful movie.
Score: C+
RIOTUS 