Dracula’s all-inclusive cruise to London doesn’t actually include the crew, but he paid for extra eats, so he’s entitled to certain liberties at mealtime.
Based on the Captain’s Log portion of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, director André Ovredal (The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Troll Hunter, Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark) pipes us aboard for The Last Voyage of the Demeter, as the good ship and its sturdy sailors transport mysterious crates of soil from the Black Sea to England, circa 1897.
Our protagonist Clemens (Corey Hawkins) is a Cambridge-educated black doctor who lands a high-paying job among the small crew of The Demeter, bound for England.
Clemens, an able hand with a keen mind, discovers a stowaway in the person of Anna (Aisling Franciosi), an anemic young girl boxed away in one of the crates of dirt and attempts to revive her using transfusions of his own blood.
Anna did not buy a ticket nor did she sneak onboard of her own accord. She was part of the cargo to feed a VIP guest in the hold. Needless to say the guest is not amused by her removal, and so begins a terror campaign against a rapidly shrinking squad of sailors.
The crusty crew has no idea what they’re up against, and it’s only Clemens, the social outcast, that refuses to give in to fear and superstition, reasoning that if the thirsty creature can bleed, it can also die.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter does what it’s supposed to do—turn up the darkness and add the tension of being trapped at sea with an impossible predator breathing down your neck.
It’s not comforting, just ask Sheriff Brody.
The inability of the seamen to find the vampire during daylight hours is a troubling detail as is the accelerated transformation of Anna from feedbag to formidable fighter.
Even so, the winged vampire effects and indeed the creaky look and feel of this voyage of the damned are first class all the way. Ovredal has booked us as reluctant passengers witnessing a terrible, unnatural nautical calamity.
Remember the old saying, “Worse things happen at sea?” It’s true.
Warning! Ship’s dog Huckleberry doesn’t make it.
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