just saw the last voyage of the demeter! unfortunately, it mostly just made me think about how good dracula is and how much better written everything was in the book. the demeter entries are some of the best-written suspense and horror i’ve ever read, and it’s a shame that a movie based on that really interesting and rich mini narrative ended up mostly throwing away everything that made it what it is.
1) i was SO looking forward to the iconic pose of the captain tied to the wheel with the crucifix as the ship blew into the harbor, and they didn’t even do it!!! they did try to do a dark version of it later — that seemed to imply that dracula himself tied the captain to the wheel instead of feeding on him or just killing him, when he was JUST THERE? — that seemed mostly like an attempt to appease hardcore book lovers. rip.
1a) in that vein, i do not understand the narrative choice to create a new pov character/Final Girl when the captain already had such rich characterization and evolution in the novel. i didn’t even necessarily mind clemens as a character! in any other survival-based horror movie i actually probably would’ve quite liked him, but he was just so wholly unnecessary and thematically out of place that i got more and more disappointed in the films insistence on his importance as it went on. we HAVE the captains log text from dracula — in fact, it’s all we have to get to know what happened on the demeter!! — and if you were already going to do log voiceovers, why not make the captain your pov character/protagonist as well?? i quite liked the casting of davos as the captain! it’s such a shame they didn’t give him anything to do, though. (also poor wojchek! the first mate was such a tumblr favorite during dracula daily that i’m sad they made him so unlikeable solely to prop up our new protag.)
2) the choice to not use the rich characterization of the captain and the first mate from the novel in favor of a made-up protag saddened me, especially because they seemed to be using clemens as a vehicle for the story’s thin themes: rationality/education and human progress vs. bestial nature. dracula is about civilization and our concepts of it! it’s about progress/modernity vs tradition! dracula has the appearance of a man and can pass in society, that’s part of what makes him so insidious!! (plus, having clemens Final Girl it to England to have him take up a vampire hunter mantle downplays the sheer scale of devastation dracula can wreak. part of the horror of that point of the novel is jonathan’s prior realization that if dracula gets to london, there is literally no stopping him. having someone escape the demeter proves that wrong and makes dracula seem weak and uninteresting, on par with someone accidentally letting a wild lion loose in a city or something.)
3) this characterization/character design of dracula. it leaned wayyyy too much in the direction of the vampire from midnight mass (which i love!! but not here), and as a result took away one of the primary horror aspects of the original story: that dracula has completely outplayed and overpowered the demeter crew. he’s smart!! he’s a character! he paid for his stuff to be sent to england with a bonus for timeliness! he has an address! you expect me to believe that a silent beast-creature version of dracula knows what london even is?? this is the same creature that has a centuries old family insignia and legal transport documents?? part of the horror of the story is that dracula has everything planned out and the crew is so, so in the dark and so, so outmatched. dracula is toying with them the entire time, and that’s part of what makes the eventual resignation and acceptance and bravery of the captain and crew so heart wrenching! this dracula can’t even shapeshift or control the weather!!
3a) the anna character was so fucking stupid and unneeded. first of all, the dracula we know and love has no need to pack a snack bc he PLANS TO FEED ON THE DEMETER CREW. why the fuck was this dracula feeding on the livestock when the humans were right there?? second of all, she just acted as an exposition mouthpiece to tell the crew what they’re up against and then give clemens some half-assed motivation at the end. i hate this bc A HUGE PART OF THE STORY’S HORROR IS THAT THE CREW HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT THEY’RE FIGHTING — which makes their small victories and smart decisions that much sweeter for us to read. having a character info dump everything necessary takes away from the charm of the rest of the characters’ human spirits.
3b) for a film based on a kind of niche part of the dracula novel they sure didn’t keep any of the actual dracula lore. there was sunlight burning, crucifixes not working, no dracula animal transformation, transformation for those fed on even with regular blood transfusions (a whole part of the book is that the transfusions DO WORK as long as they’re regular/often enough?? wtf). i think part of this is the choice to frame dracula as some sort of mindless/natural beast, when the more spiritual aspects of stuff working against him in the book have to do with intelligence/rationality/human civilization (concepts of hell, damnation, societal constructs that have no room for him, etc). i was disappointed in this bc what’s the point of using the dracula text as a basis for a movie like this if you’re going to take out all the themes and instead just make it a man vs beast film like so many other horror movies?
3c) as a result of changing so much from the source material, a lot of plot holes that were already covered in the book opened up, which i mostly find frustrating from the standpoint that people who haven’t read the book are gonna be like “well why didn’t they do x?” when in the story they literally did!!
bonus: i did like some of the filmmaking choices! i liked that at first we thought olgaren’s “it burns” was about his growing thirst, and then we get really subtle/lovely shots of the sunlight as it rises before it destroys him. some of the film angles were really interesting — though i think there was too much use of slightly strange head-on shots — and i liked the choice to have clemens/the captain have to watch but be unable to do anything as toby is attacked/fed on. i liked the shot of dracula coming out of the fog at wojchek.
mostly it made me sad that they seemed to think audiences wouldn’t like the movie unless they made it more like a standard horror film, which does a disservice to both the source material and the movie this could’ve been :/
