The Last Voyage of the Demeter

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this approach taken for an adaptation before: fleshing out a tiny section of a much larger story. I assume it’s not the first, but it’s certainly uncommon. There are plenty of stories which flesh out events in the background of existing tales, such as the Broadway musical Wicked (soon to be a film). But this is a movie based on a few pages of Dracula, the captain’s log of the Demeter, which carried Dracula and his boxes of soil to England, where the bulk of the novel takes place. It’s honestly not a bad idea! Although those pages begin with scant details, they slowly get longer, more frantic, more dire. They set a fine template for a horror movie, and paint a picture of the guerrilla tactics employed by Dracula.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter does take some liberties in an attempt to deepen the story a bit. Our way in is Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a highly educated doctor and astronomer, who’s looking for passage back home to England. Initially rejected by first-mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), he wins them over by saving Toby (Woody Norman), the grandson of Captain Elliot (Liam Cunningham), from a falling crate.

As the voyage progresses, they begin to hear strange noises, and eventually the crew starts to hear strange noise and see strange shapes in the fog. When all the livestock turn up dead, with the same gnarly wound on their necks being the culprit, they search the ship for the culprit and find a broken open crate containing a comatose young woman named Anna (Aisling Franciosi). Clemens cares for her, giving her endless blood transfusions. When she finally comes to, she runs onto the deck screaming “He’s here!” The next night, the carnage begins.

For much of its runtime, this is an enjoyable haunted house, slasher-like flick. We see little of Dracula, instead catching glimpses as he scurries off. There’s conflict amongst the crew as they argue about whether there’s really a monster on board, or if the dog went crazy and killed the livestock before itself dying. In a slight turn, our protagonist is the skeptic, wielding science in the face of the fantastic, refusing to believe what his eyes are telling him must be true. It’s not unique, but I appreciate that while Clemens is clearly incredible smart and capable and a good man, he doesn’t magically possess all the knowledge he needs for this situation. Instead, he very strongly feels the need for the world to make sense, for as he lays out in a wonderful monologue as we head into the third act, that rationality allows him the agency to rise above.

However, the cast has too many characters who serve no real purpose, except maybe to give us occasional exposition. They lead to a number of scenes with scant payoff that feel like we’re biding our time, and diffuse some of the established tension. It’s an attempt to inject some emotional stakes, but we know the ship’s ultimate fate due to both the novel and the first scene, so they feel superfluous. Toby is entirely uninteresting. His bond with the Captain never really matters. Even when he’s in peril, it never changes the Captain’s effect on the plot, just the specifics of his behavior. Anna’s introduction is too late to make an impact, and she’s totally fatalistic, with no desires of her own, so we’re given nothing to hold on to. She’s there solely to tell us the rules of Dracula. And as they’re absent from the log, they could have been cut out with ease.

While Clemens is also a fabrication of the movie (the novel explicitly says everyone had sailed with the Captain before), he drives things forward, and does provide a contrast to the crew. He’s learning along with them, while bringing his own knowledge and personality and problem solving skills. We don’t know much of his backstory, but it’s enough that we’re rooting for him, despite our knowledge of how the Demeter ends up in the book. And Corey Hawkins does a great job portraying him, bringing depth and worldliness.

The fundamental flaw of this film, though, is its inability to really hold tension. It comes in small spurts, but mostly disappears outside of the scenes you know are set for a sighting or an attack. Since most of the conflict is directed towards the monster, its absence leaves little for the cast to push against. There’s some infighting, but it never flourishes into danger. And Dracula is used quite sparingly for much of the runtime, leading to large lulls. It’s broken up when some of his early victims make brief appearances as the undead, but they don’t stick around long enough to feel like a true threat.

Even as such, it was okay enough if not great, until we get to the final confrontation, including its setup. I won’t go into details, because spoilers, but suffice it to say I was disappointed with most aspects of their plan. It didn’t provide much in the way of creativity, and it featured characters making nonsensical decisions which lead to their demise.

As mentioned, Hawkins was quite good. Dastmalchian was a joy to witness, as always. He’s made one hell of a career for himself as a prolific and distinctive character actor, and I will always light up the moment he steps on screen. Liam Cunningham is perfectly cast and plays his role well, naturally inhabiting the position of crusty old sea captain. No one else is worth mentioning. They’re not bad, but they’re nothing particularly good, either.

What of the design of Dracula? If you’ve seen the poster, much less the trailer, you know this isn’t your traditional Dracula. He’s kind of a man/bat/gargoyle thing. It’s a unique design, clearly intended to be a horror character instead of the novel’s Gothic air. I think they’re going off the novel’s mention that witnesses saw a dog-like animal exit the ship when it crashed on shore. I appreciate that he was primarily performed (by Javier Botet) and only enhanced by CGI, as opposed to a purely computational creation. But honestly, to see him stalking around the ship is a bit more silly than it is scary. Instead of Dracula, he feels like some new, unrelated vampiric being. Which is maybe part of the point: to return this well-known, demystified being to its alien state. But having good intentions doesn’t mean it worked. So eh. Good makeup/creature effects, but didn’t end up working in the story.

Which is ultimately my thought on the film. A decent idea, but that was where the development stopped. Okay characters, but mostly lacking the depth to make them feel worthwhile, and not enough for you to truly care, except maybe with regards to Clemens, and I think that’s more the work of Hawkins than the script. And wasting the goodwill it did manage in a lackluster third act. Sure, I liked it more than Renfield, but at least that was a swing, and had some truly great character work. This just lands like the soft thud of wet wood against unimpressive rocks.