Commentary: ‘Last Voyage Of The Demeter’ Completely Changes The Context Of Dracula

Any book to film adaptation has to make a lot of choices regarding how loyal it wants to stay to the source material. This is difficult under the best of circumstances, but it’s especially challenging when there isn’t much material to go on from the source. When stories have to fill in a lot of the blanks with original content, it’s easy for plot and characters to go astray from their original incarnations. A great example of this is The Last Voyage Of The Demeter. The film takes a very brief section of Dracula and expands it into a full length horror movie, but in doing so, the film’s story completely reworks the context of the events in Bram Stoker‘s novel.

The story begins as the crew of the Demeter starts accepting cargo of wooden boxes from fearful locals who issue a dire warning. One of the crewmen sees the mark of a dragon on the box and gets spooked, dropping it and causing it to break slightly. A little dirt falls out, but the box is then loaded inside. During the journey, Dracula (Javier Botet) emerges from the box extremely weakened and begins feeding on the livestock. As he gets stronger, he begins attacking humans, crawling to devour them at first before growing strong enough to fly around. Ultimately, a newcomer to the crew, Clemens (Corey Hawkins), is able to outsmart Dracula and impale him on the ship as it is destroyed. Of course, Dracula survives and continues on to England.

There are several noteworthy additions to Stoker’s tale that other reviewers have pointed out. A main one being Clemens, who is a character completely original to the film. But there’s a more pressing difference regarding the circumstances of Dracula’s journey. In the novel, Dracula willingly travels to England to expand his reach and power. The decision is portrayed as Dracula always being in control and casually feeding on the Demeter in transit. This is obviously not the case for the film as the story needs excitement and horror. To do this, Dracula is depicted more monstrous and extremely weakened in the beginning. But then it draws into question the context of the entire situation. It seemed as if Dracula wasn’t taking this journey willingly if he emerged so weakened. It appeared as if the locals, knowing full well that Dracula was in the box, imprisoned him and sent him on the ship in order to expel him from their homeland. This explains why there was a dragon marking on his box. It served as a warning. It’s also possible that the dirt that escaped when the box was dropped served as the red herring needed for Dracula to make his escape. These are just a few of the incredibly distinct differences from the novel that completely changes the how and why of the entire story.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is now streaming on Paramount+.