The 1974 TV movie adaptation of Dracula has a brief, great moment where we see the wreck of the Demeter, the ship that has brought the title character to British soil. There’s a remarkable amount of wreckage on the beach. Most shocking is a dead man lashed to the wheel, crucifix in hand.
There is a single chapter in the original novel devoted to that doomed voyage. Like some sort of very early found footage, we learn about what transpired from the captain’s log. Like so many recent prequels and spin-offs, 2023’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a full-length feature telling a story that did not necessarily need to be told.
Not that this isn’t an enjoyable enough film. It is largely a conventional entertainment, but it is bloody enough to warrant an R, which I respect. And that’s coming from somebody who doesn’t like gore. However, the film still loses points with me for a great deal of that blood being CGI. Have we reached the point where even arterial sprays are no longer done with physical effects?
CGI is abused the usual other ways as well. Anybody seeing a film like this made in this age will know the massive ships we see docked early in the film are entirely digital creations. But do they have to reinforce the artificiality with virtual camera swoops that would not otherwise be possible? Once again, if you want to sell me on your computer-generated imagery, then don’t call attention to it. Just shoot everything as if it was part of the usual background.
The film actually opens at the end, with assorted Brits rushing to the newly beached ship. An old guy finds what he says is the captain’s log, and I automatically said the next word I expected, which was “Stardate…” Damn you, original Star Trek series.
We then go back four weeks, to where a crew is being recruited for the titular ship. We know from a text card at the very beginning that it will ship with 50 crates. I’m so glad we know how many crates it was carrying. Only two of those will matter, one of which contains ol’ Drac, of course. And the other contains Aisling Franciosi, because we have a vampire who thought it better to bring along his own food than what the ship might provide.
Not that he won’t partake of a veritable buffet on board. There’s all the animals quartered that were meant to be meals for the crew. Those are all dispatched in one night, on I believe the first night on open water. So, day one of the voyage and meat is already off the menu for the crew.
Corey Hawkins is the ship’s doctor, and he notices there are large bite marks on each animal’s corpse. There are also bite marks on Franciosi when he finds her in that box of dirt in the hold. He gives her a blood transfusion, which restores her enough that she can help round out the ensemble as the sole female.
The rest of the crew is Liam Cunningham as the captain, who is in advanced years. He is planning to hand over his duties to first mate David Dastmalchian after this voyage, but he may be retiring earlier than that. Dastmalchian is almost unrecognizable when compared to the last picture I saw him in, the next year’s Late Night with the Devil. Other important crew members are Woody Norman as the cabin boy, Jon Jon Briones as the cook, and Stefan Kapicic as the only one aside from Franciosi who knows the legends concerning the threat they are facing. No knock on the other actors, but they have little to distinguish them except for being the guys on the boat doing the heavy lifting.
The sailors have a habit of knocking on wood whenever something odd happens. As Norman explains to Hawkins, you can hear the echoes of it going along the length of the ship, in a ritual that might as well be called foreshadowing. Still, it makes for an effectively creepy scene when this schtick is employed while the monster is stalking crew members.
The plot is basically that of the slasher genre, as people become dinner over a series of nights, first one at a time, and then in increasing numbers. At the rate Dracula is going through the characters, one would think he isn’t intent on making it to England. Perhaps he is going to sail the vessel himself, being in possession of some seafaring skills previously unrevealed in other works.
I was reminded in some regards of the original Alien, partly because a ship on the ocean back when might as well be a vessel in deep space. What most reminded me of that other film, however, is a scene where Hawkins explores the hold, and something about the space instantly reminded me of the scene from that other film where Harry Dean Stanton meets his fate.
The version of the vampire in this iteration of the tale is the rat-faced kind from Nosteratu and Salem’s Lot. Javier Botet performs the character, in what I can only assume was entirely motion capture, as I suspect what we see in every frame in which he appears is CGI. Initially, he looks a bit like a taller version of Gollum, a design used so often in films that I am starting to suspect it is a template in whatever motion capture software is used. Later, he will grow huge wings like a dragon and will talk like the Nazgul, which is a strange kind of evolution. Wait a few more days, and maybe he will turn into an Ent.
At one point, Hawkins makes a statement that intrigued me enough to take note of it: “That’s the thing about progress isn’t it? It cares not for joy.” Perhaps he was commenting on The Last Voyage of the Demeter itself. This is a movie that is mildly enjoyable, but instantly forgettable. It tells a tale we didn’t necessarily need to be told, one we already know how it will end, and which is in no way improved by the extensive CGI in it. Even the rats we see are computer generated, taking valuable acting jobs away from real vermin.
Dir: André Øvredal
Starring Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, David Dastmalchian
Watched on blu-ray