If you’re familiar with the mythology of Dracula, you already know the fate of the Demeter and its doomed crew going into this movie.  The ship left Romania bound for England, encountered fierce storms and a strange man on board and the crew disappearing one by one.  When the Demeter reaches shore, the crew are nowhere to be found.  The ship’s undead cargo, Dracula, wisely disembarked for London long before he could be discovered amidst the shattered remains of the ship.

As such, The Last Voyage of the Demeter faithfully recreates the text of Stoker’s novel.  We see the cursed cargo being loaded onto the ship, meet various members of the crew, note the bad things that happen to them along the way and await the expected outcome.  In expanding the material to fill a nearly two hour runtime, writers Bragi Schut Jr. and Zak Olkewicz introduce a handful of new characters.  Clemens (Corey Hawkins) has trained to be a doctor but is unable to secure a position because he is Black.  Captain Elliot (Liam Cunningham), whose journal entries are what this movie is based on, is stoic and pragmatic about what he states is his last voyage.  (He’s more right than he ever would have guessed.)  First mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian) is determined to complete the voyage despite the troubling signs because Elliot has promised him the ship when they dock.  Stowaway Anna (Aisling Franciosi) has been included in the cargo as Dracula’s snack.  Toby (Woody Norman), Elliot’s grandson, is aboard to learn the proverbial ropes.  Joseph (Jon Jon Briones) is a highly superstitious cook.  There are other members of the crew who generate varying levels of sympathy before they are devoured.

The experience of watching The Demeter is one based in fatalism because we know that nobody survives the events being depicted.  As a result, the story has no suspense to it.  The only question being which of the characters would die before the fateful climax.  The movie suggests that one of the main characters survives and follows Dracula in London, an intriguing  development that is not mentioned in the novel.  The filmmakers clearly were anticipating a sequel that, based on the low turnout for this movie, will never come into being.

Even though everything about The Demeter has been preordained, I admired the craftsmanship that went into making the movie.  The acting is solid across the board.  Cunningham, so brilliant as the damaged-yet-noble Onion Knight on Game of Thrones, subtly shades his line readings with just the right amount of dignity and pathos and almost single handedly makes the movie watchable.  Dastmalchian leverages his physically towering and unnerving presence to great effect as Wojchek while also making him sympathetic.  Hawkins brings just enough righteous indignation to Clemens without becoming tiresome.  

The production design is top-notch, starting with the creaky, weather-beaten ship.  Behind the camera, director André Øvredal (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) recreates the floating haunted house setting of the story.  Cinematographer Tom Stern captures every dark and damp moment of the journey to a fault, and some of the action is needlessly murky.  The palette used throughout is a dreary assortment of blacks and grays, and could have used a touch of color to offset the overall dreariness.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a well-made if pointless entry to the Dracula movie cannon.  Due to the conscribed nature of its origins (based on a portion of a chapter of Bram Stoker’s well-known novel), the movie is completely devoid of legitimate surprises.  It reminded me of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, another movie that exists to show characters dying who we know have already died.  Additionally, Demeter frustratingly relegates its most interesting character (Dracula) to either lurking the shadows or jumping out from them to feast on a doomed character.  (You can count the number of lines he has on one hand.)  Fortunately, the movie features an admirable production design, affecting performances and a doomed atmosphere that in combination maintain interest.  As a lifelong fan of Dracula, I enjoyed the movie despite its limitations.  Demeter is ultimately a curio, but an entertaining one.  Mildly Recommended.

Analysis

2023 should have been a banner year for Dracula.  Unlike the prior year’s very middling effort The Invitation, he was featured in two splashy, high-concept blockbusters: Renfield and The Last Voyage of the Demeter.  The stage was set for Dracula to reclaim his status as the undisputed king of the classic horror movie monsters.  Unfortunately, the underwhelming box office results for both movies lead to the obvious question:  have audiences grown tired of Dracula?

Based on recent historical results, the answer to that question would have to be Yes.  The last movie featuring Dracula that was a critical and box office success was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, released way back in 1992.  Since then, movies with Dracula as a character have been underwhelming.  Mel Brooks’ Dracula, Dead and Loving It (1995) was so terrible it effectively ended his directorial career.  The Wes Craven produced Dracula 2000 was a miss.  2004’s Van Helsing (2004) wasn’t a flop, but audience indifference to it scuttled dreams of a franchise.  Dracula: Untold (2014) was an attempt to kick start Universal’s “Dark Universe”, and we all know how that turned out.  2022’s The Invitation, a movie of modest ambition that I liked, attracted a small audience.  The fact that there has not been a successful Dracula movie in thirty years is shocking.  (The notable exception being the Hotel Transylvania animated franchise.)

What makes Dracula’s recent track record even more puzzling is that audiences can’t get enough of vampires.  The Twilight series was a huge success, with the four films making $3.3B world-wide.  Even the industrial-grade Underworld series have made over $500m world-wide.  When you throw in all of the television series that have come and gone in the past three decades (True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Vampire Diaries, Legacies, The Strain, What We Do in the Shadows, etc.), audiences are still enamored with vampires.  It’s Dracula they’ve turned their collective backs on.

Perhaps the question is why movies with Dracula have failed to appeal to people who love vampires.  In one way or another, all of the movies I mentioned above fail to embrace what made Dracula such a compelling villain from the moment he entered the cultural consciousness.  The Demeter works valiantly to capture the atmosphere of one chapter of Stoker’s novel, and mostly succeeds on those limited terms.  However, that focus ends up being the reason why it fails to reach the heights of the classic Dracula movies of yesteryear.

The portion of chapter seven that was adapted for this movie is a series of journal entries made by the captain of the Demeter.  He describes the crew being ill at ease and seeing a strange man on board.  Shortly afterwards members of the crew steadily disappear, until the first mate jumps overboard.  When the captain becomes the last soul on the ship, he ties himself to the wheel to see the ship home.  This passage totals thirteen-hundred words and has been included in several Dracula movies.  A version of it was also included in Morbius, where the eponymous character is basically a superhero version of Dracula.

The challenge with basing an entire movie on the aforementioned passage is that it was never intended to exist on its own.  It is a small but incredibly effective part of a much larger work.  To get around this limitation, the screenplay writers have fleshed out all members of the crew, including the captain.  They also introduce Anna as an unwilling stowaway, who was “gifted” to Dracula by her village to keep the peace.  The new characters that populate the movie are well drawn and I did find myself sympathizing with their plight.  However, the most interesting character in the movie by far is the one who is given the smallest characterization: Dracula.

For some reason, the writers spent time giving the ship’s captain a grandson, but only portray Dracula as a hideous man-bat lurking in the shadows.  I can’t speak for other fans, but I wanted to see Dracula as more than a monster in a haunted house.  Anyone interested in seeing this movie knows that Dracula takes many forms, and that part of the enjoyment of seeing a movie with him in it is seeing him transform into his many incarnations.  This is one of the reasons why Bram Stoker’s Dracula was such a popular movie: it fully embraces Dracula as a supernatural creature with powerful abilities.  The Demeter only gives us Dracula as a man-bat and ignores all the rest.  The movie does itself a disservice by having Dracula hunt and kill the crew only in this form.  The Demeter turns him into the Victorian equivalent of the xenomorph in Alien, a monster with no subtlety or purpose other than to kill people.  Given all we know about Dracula, both the character and the novel, the movie’s approach to his character is confounding.

The second-most puzzling decision made by the writers was with the character Anna.  After coming up with a suitable reason for why she’s on the boat, the writers never bother to fully integrate her into the story.  She obviously knows more about Dracula than the crew–her village sits near his castle!  But nobody ever bothers to ask her how to defeat him.  Anna knows he rests in his crate during the day, so she could have told them to wait until daylight and simply toss his crate overboard.

Even if I accept that the crew are basically helpless to prevent the fate that awaits them, I fail to understand why Anna’s character is kept alive until the end.  The death of Elliot’s grandson delivers enough pathos.  Having Anna meet a fiery end was redundant.  Also, she’s never positioned as a romantic interest for Clemens, even though they have an intimate connection vis-a-vis his daily transfusions.  Given the sexualized nature of Dracula’s wives, I’m surprised that she never shares a passionate moment with any member of the crew.

Lastly, I was surprised at how chaste The Demeter is.  That Dracula is an overtly sexual being is well established, and his movies usually have never shied from depicting this aspect of his nature.  However, nothing remotely erotic ever happens in this movie–or even is alluded to.  Instead, The Demeter steadfastly sails on towards its bleak conclusion.  If Dracula were to ever see this movie, I would bet his reaction would be, “How could anyone believe that I wouldn’t have a little fun while confined to a boat with handsome people?”