The Big Picture
- The Last Voyage of the Demeter offers a fresh take on Dracula, showing him in a beastly form as he preys on the ship's crew in a gruesome fashion.
- Director André Øvredal aimed for a gradual reveal of Dracula, allowing the audience to see him evolve alongside the crew.
- Javier Botet's portrayal of Dracula adds to the character's creepiness, with his excellent performance lending an unsettling quality to the vampire.
Few monsters of horror legend have quite as long a shadow as Dracula. First introduced in Bram Stoker's legendary novel, the titular count has become the archetypal vampire, appearing sophisticated, manipulative, and, of course, bloodthirsty. In The Last Voyage of the Demeter, however, audiences will witness Dracula as he's never appeared before — slinking through the shadows of the Russian ship en route to London and ripping through every crew member in a beastly form. Speaking to Collider's Perri Nemiroff, director André Øvredal explained how the vampire evolves throughout the film as the crew and the viewers learn more about the creature prowling the ship.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is based on a single chapter within Stoker's original novel in which Dracula boards the merchant ship Demeter from Carpathia to London, leaving it without any crew members save for the captain by the time it arrives in port. With the film, the terrifying reality for the crew as the unholy creature kills them one by one in a gruesome fashion is finally confronted. Showing just how far removed this is from the typical Dracula viewers know, it's been described as an Alien-like film where the creature slowly creeps out of the darkness and reveals more of itself as the agonizing journey continues.
Øvredal's goal was for that gradual reveal of Dracula to feel like an evolution as everyone within the film and without becoming more familiar with how it looks and how it attacks. Writing the reveals to fit the script was crucial for him to ensure the pace feels right when watching the creature at work:
"The mystery of the look of Dracula is obviously a huge thing that, when you're sitting watching the movie, you're supposed to feel evolution. I'm very much about working with the dramatic effect of discovery and therefore, the creature, which you are discovering in this movie, the evolution of the creature, is the biggest one. So, in the beginning you need to kind of keep him in the shadows. I mean, you know. You kind of need to keep him in the shadows, and as he evolves, as the creature evolves, you can bring him more and more out. You gotta just go by a gut feeling, but at the same time, you're also breaking down the script. You're also putting together all the scenes that are with Dracula and trying to analyze, 'Is this evolution working when you go from here? Now it's 10 minutes later. Now it's three minutes later. When we see him now, what have we learned? What have we not learned?' It is also a scientific process."
Dracula Is Made All the Creepier Thanks to the Actor Behind It
Of course, it certainly helps when Javier Botet is the man behind the monster. Botet has built a reputation for his excellent character acting as nightmarish horror creatures like the Crooked Man from The Conjuring 2, KeyFace from Insidious: The Last Key, and the Slender Man from the ill-fated film based on the internet sensation. He's even been a Xenomorph before in Alien: Covenant. A recent featurette dove into how Botet became Dracula through the use of some gnarly prosthetics and make-up, but much of the beast's twitchy, uncanny nature is due to the actor's excellent performance, giving Dracula a "feral" feel as he sought the crew's blood.
The rest of the cast of The Demeter is stout too with Corey Hawkins leading the group as Clemens, a doctor who joins the crew of the cursed ship. Also on board are Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Jon Briones, Stefan Kapičić, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Woody Norman, Martin Furulund, Chris Walley, and Nicolo Pasetti.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is now playing in theaters. Check out the trailer below and don't miss our full interview with Øvredal.
