Last Voyage of the Demeter

Director André Øvredal invites us aboard a Dracula movie like no other.

BY DAVID CROW

A WEARY CREW OF working-class stiffs, a mysterious last-minute change that sees them claim unknown cargo, and a beast beneath the boards that’s picking them off one by one. It sounds like the stuff of Ridley Scott’s Alien, but it could just as easily describe a brief and brutal section of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula.

The last voyage of the Demeter, a Russian sailing vessel intended to cross between 19th century Bulgaria and Victorian England, comprises a mere five pages in the book, but those pages leave an impression. Yet despite myriad adaptations, this chapter has never been extensively explored by an original film. Until now.

“That is what’s so fantastic about the script that Bragi Schut originally wrote,” Norwegian director André Øvredal tells us. “It’s basically Alien but on a ship out in the ocean. You’re lost at sea, and the crew doesn’t know what the hell is haunting them on the ship. It’s a beautiful take on the story.”

It’s also a fresh way of returning to a familiar nightmare. By expanding the tale into its own feature-length film, suddenly we have a nihilistic yarn about men and women unaware of what’s hidden within the 50 earthboxes they’ve been charged with delivering to London… and when they do discover what is lurking within that soil, there isn’t a trace of camp in the fate that awaits.

“Our idea, and it’s from that script, is that Dracula has a different personality in this movie than in any other movie that I’ve seen about Dracula,” Øvredal explains. “To have a more monstrous quality to him was what was intriguing as a take on the Dracula mythology. We don’t have the ordinary sophisticated aristocrat; we have a feral creature attacking a crew on a ship out on the ocean.”

Dracula certainly appears more bestial—resembling a cross between a giant bat and an outright demon—but when we press Øvredal if we might see Dracula take on a human form, he cryptically teases, “We do see him in other forms.” Stoker scholars will note that could include the mist, a wolf-like beast, or a swarm of rats.

Øvredal seems just as intent on expanding the undead count’s milieu (and menu) of fellow travelers. The book sequence consists of the captain’s log and that narrow perspective on members of his crew. In the film,

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ETA: AUG. 18 though, a wide and international cast has been assembled to add dimension to the ship’s doomed route.

“It’s a crew on a ship traveling from one end of Europe to the other,” says the director, “so there is a very broad

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KNIGHT

Despite being a claustrophobic horror movie, Last Voyage of the Demeter is a colossal undertaking within its genre. Øvredal has made high-concept chillers before, including 2010’s cult classic Troll Hunter and the Guillermo del Toro co-written Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. However, Demeter included constructing a period vessel and commandeering