Movie review: 'Demeter' complements '90s Coppola 'Dracula'

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- In the novel Dracula, Bram Stoker included a chapter featuring the captain's log of the ship that brought Dracula from Transylvania to England. The Last Voyage of the Demeter, in theaters Friday, got a whole two-hour film out of imagining the events of that chapter.

The Demeter is short on crew and recruits some locals from Bulgaria. Clemens (Corey Hawkins) wins a spot on the Demeter crew while others bolt at the sight of a dragon logo on one of the crates.

Clemens discovers Anna (Aisling Franciosi) stowed away and gives her a blood transfusion. When the crew discovers the livestock the Demeter is transporting dead, Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) and first mate Wojchek's (David Dastmalchian) first thought is disease.

The audience is ahead of the Demeter crew because they know it's Dracula (Javier Botet). Director André Øvredal is still judicious about keeping Dracula mostly hidden. Even the finale uses closeups sparingly.

Dracula roams below deck with his head just out of frame. He gives a lookout sailor a brief jump scare appearing in his telescope. This is Dracula in his most animal form and monster actor extraordinaire Botet gives an animalistic physicality in the makeup and costume.

The style of Demeter feels like it could fit right in the middle of Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 Dracula adaptation. It's not as lavish as Coppola's, but there's no other Universal Dracula movie in this sort of grounded, realistic seafaring style.

The filmmakers convey how vast the ship is, both above and below deck. It's moody below, lit either by the sun shining through cracks or a lantern at night. It creates plenty of shadowy corners in which Dracula can hide.

Above deck, the film plays with the extremes of bright, broad daylight and dark night, the limited visibility further exacerbated by fog and storms. Whether enshrouded by fog or simply sailing the ocean, the Demeter is alone with a monster on board.

So, the Demeter is doomed according to Stoker's book, and the prologue which confirms it crashes ashore with no survivors. This allows screenwriters Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz to break some of the rules about who should be safe in a horror movie if everyone is doomed.

That also raises the question of where's the suspense? It works similarly to The Perfect Storm, where even though the outcome was predetermined, watching the victims make their best attempts to survive was still exciting. Now add a vampire to that.

It gets more interesting when Dracula fails to drain one crew member completely, leaving him in a violent limbo state. The crew don't know vampire rules but the audience does.

The combustion of vampiric bodies is the only overtly modern-day visual effect in the film, though there were certainly more special effects enhancing the set and the sea. It still feels plausible that Botet's Dracula could transform into Gary Oldman when he arrives at full strength.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter feels like a legitimate chapter of the Dracula legend. It immerses the audience in what feels like a real boat at sea, and an intense creature performance let loose where there's no escape.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.