The Last Voyage of the Demeter - Directed by André Øvredal
Bram Stoker devoted fewer than 2,000 words to the fate of the Demeter, the vessel Count Dracula sneaks aboard to travel from Transylvania to London. Yet even with that small interlude (it’s a chapter within a chapter) there is an overwhelming sense of paranoia and alarm and because of how well Stoker lands those feelings this small part of the story has endured in reader’s minds for years. Some film versions of the 1897 novel have tried to visualize the vampire’s massacre at sea but never for much more than a short sequence. The Bela Lugosi and Frank Langella films devote a single scene of rain and panic to the chapter. Coppola’s version comes off as an intense fever-dream.
With The Last Voyage of the Demeter André Øvredal, a Norwegian monster movie specialist, makes a meal out of a those few pages. He swaddles a grim creature feature in the trappings of period piece respectability. Demeter mixes high and low culture when it comes to horror much like the British production house Hammer has done time and time again. Ironically Hammer’s own Dracula film starring Christopher Lee as the titular vampire from 1958 completely omits the Demeter sequence. It’s odd to see this kind of film hit theaters at all but August is the February of the summer release schedule and for most films is a dumping ground or a graveyard.
Demeter knows what it’s about. From its title to the opening scene where we see an empty ship wrecked against the rocks of England we may as well have The Divine Comedy’s quote “abandon all hope ye who enter here” tattooed on the inside of our eyelids. Flashing back a few weeks Demeter wastes little time on setup quickly placing us in the midst of thickly accented sailors under the command of Captain Elliot (brilliant stage actor and Game of Thrones alum Liam Cunningham) and his first mate Wojcheck (equally brilliant character actor David Dastmalchian).
The Demeter script has been kicking around Hollywood since the early 90’s and screenwriters Bragi Schut and Zak Olkewicz have used their final credits to add more people to the Demeter’s manifest. The most important of which is a wholly invented protagonist named Clemens (Corey Hawkins). Clemens is a black man and a doctor and both details feel like the writers were working to steer away from the allegorical racism many have taken from Stoker’s novel.
The downward spiral of missing persons and strange goings on is set off by the discovery of a stowaway: a young woman played by Aisling Franciosi (who stars in a film called The Nightingale, easily the most upsetting film I’ve ever seen. Please don’t watch it.) This woman’s village was ransacked by a monster and she warns the crew of what she saw there. Monster is right. Demeter’s Dracula is not dashing or regal. He’s more creature (bat) than man and at times bears resemblance to maybe the most famous depiction of the character on film: Count Orlock from 1922’s Nosferatu. There’s also a fair amount of 1988’s Pumpkinhead in the creature design. Lovely nods to horror history on screen abound.
With the foreknowledge of a doomed crew on a damned vessel, Demeter has more in common with Ridley Scott’s Alien than any previous Dracula adaptation. Øvredal, who made the terrific Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and The Autopsy of Jane Doe knows exactly how much (or little) of his creature to show at any given moment. At times the film leans a little too heavily on CGI to achieve its magic but Øvredal uses the FX to his advantage more than he doesn’t and the result are some very painterly images.
The cast does a fantastic job, and the dialogue has gallows humor elegance. “A boat without rats? Such a thing is against nature.” I had a nagging sense that these people were too broadly stroked but I always remembered that I was watching a B movie. Demeter is pulp by way of Masterpiece Theatre, and it works. It also puts a new idea on the table. Is there more inspiration to be taken from Bram Stoker’s novel? If more filmmakers set out to make a movie with as much commitment as Demeter has I think we’d all be in for some real treats.
