When I first heard about The Last Voyage of the Demeter, I was fairly positive on the whole thing. Taking the doomed voyage from Dracula and adapting it into a movie seemed like it should be a interesting and mostly unexplored part of the mythos. Then the commercials started going back and forth between trying to hide that it was a Dracula movie and leaning into it so much that they just outright show the monster form in the trailers. The marketing made me uncertain what exactly the quality of this movie would be.

The story is, as mentioned, loosely based on the captain’s logs of the Demeter from the novel Dracula. Since the logs are barely a couple pages long and only loosely describe what happens, the movie takes it upon itself to introduce a few more characters than is mentioned in the book. Foremost is Clemens, a doctor and our main character. We also get Toby, the grandson of the captain because I can’t seem to go a day this Horrortoberfest without having a movie that kills a kid. Finally, there is Anna, found in the cargo hold as Dracula’s lunchable that got packed up with him so he could have a snack on the trip. There are a bunch of other sailors and they are mostly there to get picked off during the night.

I think the choice to put the Dracula monster front-and-center makes the story a little bit worse overall. The logs in the book are all about the creeping uncertainty of what is happening and when people start going missing, there isn’t any clue about what happened. Making the story more of a monster flick with the, admittedly cool looking, vampire on screen from fairly early on ends up making the story less about the tension and paranoia of being stuck on a ship and not knowing what’s happening and more about sailors running around trying to shoot a big bat demon. It feels like the more flamboyant, obvious kills should happen later but it’s pretty quick we get guys with their throats ripped out and the simmering tension becomes violent action.

While the story feels like it could have been handled in a more interesting way, the acting from the main characters keeps you engaged. The quiet compassion of Corey Hawkins’ Clemens is juxtaposed with first mate David Dastmalchian’s Wojchek, who is hard-as-nails and trying to keep the crew together. Liam Cunningham as Captain Eliot is phenomenal as the old sea captain that is going on one last voyage before retiring so he can make a better life for his grandson. While most of the deckhands are there more to be lunch for a hungry vampire, some still manage to bring enough life to their small parts to make you care for them when things take a turn for the worst. Stefan Kapicic plays the part of Olgaren with such a great degree of kindness and concern that, even though he isn’t exactly a main character, you still feel for him in the aftermath of his attack.

I went in fairly worried that this wouldn’t be good since I hadn’t heard any reviews for it that were glowingly positive. While it definitely feels like it could have been better, I don’t think it was bad and definitely keeps your attention for the run time.

Score: 3.5 out of 5