Dracula returns in a manner in which we have never seen him before in the latest horror film called The Last Voyage of the Demeter from director André Øvredal, known for 2010’s Troll Hunter and 2016’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe.

This story is adapted from a chapter of the original Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, detailing the voyage of a ship that transported Dracula from Romania to London. This film goes into more specific details of the crew of the Demeter and the victims of the ill-fated ship.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter creates a creepy atmosphere and goes all-in on some choices that were surprising and unexpected in the narrative. It basically took the character of Dracula and looked at it more as a monster that the crew of the Demeter were desperately trying to survive.

The film, for the most part, looked really great. Its dark mood was translated with the use of the shots on the ship and it built a hopeless feel with its claustrophobic setting. The full shots of the ship on the sea was consistently beautiful giving us the feel of how trapped the sailors must have been.

Most of the performances were well done. Corey Hawkins was the lead protagonist, Dr. Clemens, who had a strength throughout the film. The Demeter captain, Eliot was played by Liam Cunningham, who brought a soulfulness to this character, trying to maintain his leadership through a terrible loss. David Dastmalchian played Wojchek, the second in command. Dastmalchian never fails to be excellent. The young actor Woody Norman, who played Toby, has some difficult scenes to carry out and does an admirable job of it. I should also shout out the performance of Stefan Kapicic who has some of the best and most frightening scenes of the film.

Now, there are some problems with the film. It is about 15-20 minutes too long. There was a repetitiveness that comes from the length. Even shaving off about 10 minutes would have helped the narrative. The finale of the third act was not as well done as the remainder of the film. Some of it just felt like they needed to end with a big confrontation and it did not all work.

There was a lot of really positive things in the film, but a lot of it just does not tied together too well. One of the issues I had was that none of these people, even the Cambridge-educated doctor, seemed to be very smart. Maybe I brought my own Vampire-lore knowledge into the film and these people would not have the prior background knowledge I had about vampires, but it seemed as if there was enough physical evidence that occurred during the film that they could have formulated a better, more effective plan than the silly one they eventually came up with at the end.

The movie was the most effective when it focused on the psychological aspects of the situation instead of the action beats.

Still, I found it to be mostly entertaining, included a great character design for Dracula and some truly brutal moments that were bloody and a couple that hit hard.

3.2 stars