Jonah Naplan   August 11, 2023

“The Last Voyage of the Demeter” probably had a terrific elevator pitch, but that surmising idea has been accentuated out way too long, tempering the premise’s full potential. This film, adapted from the seventh chapter of Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula, imagines what went on in the vessel upon which the famed vampire transported himself to London in 1897. The ship’s name was the Demeter, and the vampire was Nosferatu, of course—a not-quite-human, not-quite-alien whose lust for an anthropoid snack acquainted him with the innards of each member on the ship’s crew. This is the second time Dracula has been portrayed on the big screen this year, after April’s clumsy “Renfield,” and it is also a clear attempt to not merely modernize the tale, but tell it as it is written. It’s a shame that the movie doesn’t always match that ambition.

“Last Voyage” opens with the Demeter about to set sail from Romania to London, carrying important cargo in its hull. Dozens of suspicious crates are being transported to a mysterious figure in Carfax Abbey, and many of the skittish recruits back down from the job. Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham), his right-hand man Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), and grandson Toby (Woody Norman) are some of the few to remain, along with last minute enlistee Clemens (Corey Hawkins), the most educated man onboard who provides medical assistance to the crew.

Once the Demeter sets off on its doomed voyage, Clemens discovers a maladious stowaway below deck named Anna (a tragic Aisling Franciosi). Left in an ailing state for a good chunk of the film, Anna warns the crew that there’s a secret passenger onboard, one that already has their fates all written out. The bristly, ebony-hued Dracula (Javier Botet) has nestled himself into a dirt hideout amidst the cargo containers, arising from his niche each night to select a midnight snack or two. More often than not, his snacks are anthropomorphous.

Before long, all of the ship’s livestock and Toby’s poor hound become Dracula’s delectable hor d'oeuvres, as the crew starts to suspect that there’s something far more sinister at play here than rabies. Of course, the raison d'etre for movies such as this one, is that the anomaly will, in one way or another, wreak havoc upon its subjects in an aesthetically gory fashion.

And while genre fans will delight in the bloodbath this film divulges, “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” is a very potently sad film, never quite allowing the viewer to have fun with the concept. It’s a lot like a feature length joke that you laugh at once, look around to realize no one else is laughing, and then sit awkwardly in silence for the rest of whatever proceeds.

Most of the film’s tonal melancholy draws from the grief the characters feel as their friends are each picked off one by one. I at least appreciated that each death was acknowledged appropriately before the narrative moved forth, a step in the right direction away from last week’s dreadful “Meg 2: The Trench,” that merely used sudden death as a way to humor the viewer.

But because “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” chooses to go in the exact opposite direction, it sacrifices any real cinematic brio, let alone moments of comedy. For this concept, with this famed antagonist, a little gouda shouldn’t be too much to ask. Yet director André Øvredal, whose previous efforts “Trollhunter,” “The Autopsy of Jane Doe,” and most recently “Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark” taught him a thing or two about horror cinema, pummels the viewer into submission as he kills off not only lovable animals, but makes sympathetic characters suffer in increasingly more painful ways.

Of course, we know the film’s outcome long before we even sit down in our recliner—Dracula will eat his way through the crew, the Demeter will not in fact sink, and the vampire will make it to London, as was intended, to continue his blood-sucking rampage. What may not occur to you, however, is how exactly Dracula will go about getting what he wants, and how that’ll be portrayed in glorious R-rated fashion. Well, not so glorious. “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” is one of the more detailed horror films to come along in some time, but as a visual potluck, the movie looks dark and drab. Cinematographers Roman Osin and Tom Stern paint the landscape of the stormy Aegean with almost exclusively nighttime hues, rendering the majority of the film’s action obfuscated. It’d look even more indecipherable if you were to watch the film on an airplane—maximum brightness on your carry-on device be damned.

The dark nooks and crannies of the Demeter are not the only thing struggling to be lit. The film’s ensemble of characters are poorly written and exhausting, and though the crew cares when their fellow mates are killed off, it’s difficult for the audience to find the same emotional capacity to mourn with them. The cast of actors undeniably tries their best to stay afloat, but they can only do so much before the narrative sinks: Hawkins is a stand out here, and the only one who—spoiler alert!—lives to see the light of day; Franciosi, from Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale,” is a terrific actress, but her character is never afforded the thematic poignancy of being the only woman onboard; Dastmalchian has recently ascended to a second life as a cult horror icon, but is given little to do here other than deliver wicked facial expressions in the presence of danger; and Cunningham never quite hits the mark of the seasoned sea captain, whose crumbling conscience knows this will be his last voyage whether they ever make it to shore or not.

Dracula origin stories have been trotted out since the dawn of the silver screen, but rarely do they feel as lacking of a true directorial spark as this one. The way it broaches death, grief, and existential dread, juxtaposed beside the expected corn of genre cinema that lingers dauntingly in the proscenium, is perhaps the film’s greatest weakness. As in movies, and as in life, inspired ideas do not always look as good in physical form as they do on paper. In the case of this film, all the puzzle pieces are here, but the user has been too lazy as to even take them out of the box.

Now playing in theaters.