A solid vampire horror movie of fine craft and effective scares, what Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter lacks in consistent thrills it makes up in its serious and grizzly approach to a neutered sub-genre of horror.
It’s been 120 years since the publication of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, and the blood thirsty count still lives on with 2023 featuring two high-profile Dracula movies in Renfield and Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter. The latter is based on a short segment in Stoker’s book in which a ship named the Demeter transports 50 crates of earth from Transylvania to London, as Dracula picks off the crew one at a time.
Despite such a simple premise and well-known conclusion, Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter works as an engrossing and suitably horrific vampire movie, with occasional scenes of shocking violence effectively utilised when things get a little too calm on the good ship Demeter. With a runtime of 118 minutes, editing cuts and trims here and there would have made a difference in ratcheting up the paranoia and tension.
Director Andre Overdal’s (The Autopsy of Jane Doe) elevator-pitch for the film as “Alien on the high-seas” is adequate with Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter featuring a similar structure, as a mysterious monster strikes from the darkness against a crew of grunt seamen of varied European stock, with Liam Cunningham and David Dastmalchian delivering the most memorable performances.
Great too is the cinematography by Roman Osin (Mortal) and Tom Stern (Sully) that captures the dense darkness from which the Dracula monster slithers and feeds. The production design by Edward Thomas (Monster Hunter) is also aces, with the Demeter itself a fine vessel-of-the-damned that lives and breathes with its creaks and bumps.
What Dracula: Voyage of the Damned lacks is a charismatic lead protagonist, with Corey Hawkins a serviceable yet at times dull presence that struggles to keep proceedings lively during the scenes of calm before the crimson storm.
Interestingly Hawkins’ character Clemens - an educated and trained doctor and scientist who through his experience with racism seeks to find why there is evil in the hearts of men - comes across as an updated version of the classic Van Helsing archetype who leans on science to fight against an ancient evil. In a further embrace of “the science”, Overdal (disappointedly) makes moot the power of Christianity as the force of good against the demons of darkness, with scenes of characters using the crucifix as a weapon met with mocking glee by the Dracula monster.
It is, of course, Dracula itself who is the star of …Voyage of the Demeter. Used in sparing Jaws-like fashion, this latest version of an immortal monster hits all the right marks as a demonic, razor tooth man-bat creature of the night, who is devoid of the classic romantic seduction characteristics in favour of pure primal bloodlust and savagery.
In a post-Twilight world where the vampire has become a thing of goofy soap opera theatrics, it is good to see Dracula: Voyage of the Damned bring the fear back into the fangs.
