The Big Picture
- The Last Voyage of the Demeter is based on Chapter 7 from Bram Stoker's iconic novel, Dracula.
- The chapter serves as the most bone-chilling part of the novel and could have worked as a standalone short story.
- The movie adaptation takes liberties with the source material, expanding the story and introducing new characters, but still captures the scary essence of Dracula.
For most people, The Last Voyage of the Demeter might just seem like a brand-new original vampire movie, when actually it's based on a book! A single chapter out of a book actually — in some versions of the book named "The Captain's Log" and "Cutting from the Dailygraph" in others but most widely known as Chapter 7 — from none other than Dracula! This short chunk of Bram Stoker's groundbreaking horror novel isn't just a little section of the Count's story, it's arguably the most bone-chilling part of the entire package! But how do you adapt one chapter into an entire two-hour movie? Well, to do that, you'll have to take some liberties with the source material, but given the way that Stoker tells the tale, there's a lot of room to work with. No matter how you roll this story, the most important thing to note is that Dracula was originally written to be scary, and in both Last Voyage and "Captain's Log," that gets driven home like a stake in the heart.
Bram Stoker's Dracula isn't just the seminal text of vampire literature, it's one of the most important works in the genre of horror as a whole. It has an instantly iconic villain, gives us the perfect hero to stand up against the Count, sets the stage for the genre's dark, crumbling, shadow-fallen locations, and lays way for the vampire as one of the most recognizable creatures in horror. It's even told primarily from a first-person perspective, largely written in the form of journal entries, so you could almost look at Dracula as an early found footage horror story! Just... without the footage. More than anything, Dracula is remembered for these elements, but what most people don't know is that one of the best parts of his original novel acts on its own equally as well as it does in tandem with the rest of the story. It could have been a short story, and easily given a standalone release. Chapter 7 of Dracula is one of the most chilling pieces of fiction pre-20th century.
What Is 'The Last Voyage of the Demeter' Based On?
Image via Universal
Chapter 7 clocks in around 100 pages into Dracula, telling the tale of the Demeter, a cargo ship traveling to London. This entire chapter is told from the perspective of the ship's captain, following most days of their journey between early July and early August in 1893. The captain's journey starts with the kind of standard log entries that you might expect to come across as the ship sets sail for London. As it goes along though, crew members begin mysteriously disappearing and the captain is left to fend for himself. Why are all of these crew members vanishing into thin air? It's because, unknown to the crew, Count Dracula is aboard the Demeter! Uh oh! Dracula continues feeding off of the crew members, one by one, until only the captain is left. He ties himself to the helm of the Demeter and is found dead soon after, once the ship coasts into London. The chapter is fairly short, chalking up to only a few pages, but given its limited first-person viewpoint, there's a ton of room to expand.
This is where The Last Voyage of the Demeter comes into play. A straight adaptation of Chapter 7 feels like something that should have happened eons ago, but has only been a passing element in different Dracula movies. There's Nosferatu aboard a ship in, you guessed it, Nosferatu. It appears in the Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker's Dracula, among many other Dracula adaptations. The Demeter has been around, but never as the primary location for an entire movie... until now!
What Are the Differences Between the Movie and the Chapter From 'Dracula'?
To the surprise of no Dracula fans, The Last Voyage of the Demeter follows the crew of a cargo ship as they sail from Romania to London, with each member of the crew being picked off one after another by something sinister. There's no need to beat around the bush — that sinister thing is Count Dracula (Javier Botet)! But given that Last Voyage has just under a two-hour runtime, a lot needed to be added to the original text to hit this length. That's without mentioning the fact that the movie and source material have totally different framing devices, so you're going into both with wildly different beginnings. In the book, the captain's log for the Demeter is read by Mina Murray (one of the novel's main characters), whereas in the movie, the captain's log is found aboard the wreckage of the Demeter by the authorities inspecting it. With this difference being apparent as soon as the movie kicks off, fans will already be spotting the changes between the movie made from the book.
Instead of being told in the first person like its novelistic counterpart, Last Voyage is told like any other movie. It follows the entire crew of the Demeter, but most closely focuses on Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a doctor who joins these folks on their journey. Clemens' backstory of being one of Cambridge's first graduated Black doctors ends up making for the movie's most compelling emotional moments and is one that was written specifically for Last Voyage. Speaking of which, most of the movie's characters were actually invented for this adaptation in particular — people like Anna (Aisling Franciosi) and Wojcheck (David Dastmalchian). While Chapter 7 doesn't go out of its way to flesh out any characters, those that are named do appear. The Captain (who is given the name Elliot, played by Liam Cunningham) is a major player in the movie, while other characters like Olgaren (Stefan Kapičić) and Petrofsky (Nikolai Nikolaeff) have smaller parts. Obviously, the one character that the film adaptation couldn't go without is Dracula himself.
How Does Dracula in 'The Last Voyage of the Demeter' Compare to the Book?
In The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Dracula isn't exactly the most active threat. He looms in the shadows, sneaks around the boat to hunt his prey, and spends a lot of time hiding away where no one can find him. This is largely similar to how he is portrayed in Chapter 7, with characters only getting brief glimpses of him every now and then. On top of that, any time someone does see him, they feel or are treated as though they've lost their mind... until more and more people start getting killed. Dracula might hunt similarly between the two books, but his actual presentation is radically different.
Physically, Last Voyage's Dracula looks way more like a cross between Nosferatu and Kurt Barlow from Salem's Lot. He's hairless, bony, slimy, bald, has straggly sharp fangs, and moves around like a feral animal. Considering that this movie is actually trying to make Dracula scary again, this is great, but it's not exactly Dracula as we know him. Neither is he in the book though. In the book, when Dracula is aboard the Demeter, he's described as tall, thin, and ghastly pale. While that's his only real description in Chapter 7, Dracula is often referred to as tall, thin, sharp-toothed, and has a long white mustache. While a bit of a haunted KFC Colonel look might have been terrifying in the late 1800s, it seems safe to say that the look Dracula's rocking in Last Voyage is way scarier.
There's also something about Dracula in this movie that makes him seem less calculated and way more like a loose cannon. In the book, he's slow to the kill, and even when he finally catches someone, there often isn't much to show. With the movie, that couldn't be further from the case. Dracula's like an animal, and any time he gets a kill, it's an absolute bloodbath. This makes for a fun movie, but not exactly what you'd expect if you know the original novel well. That being said, if you're going to do another Dracula adaptation, you don't have to stick 100% by the books. We wanted Dracula to be scary again, and that's exactly what they did.
How Different is the Ending of 'Last Voyage' from the Book?
Both the movie and the chapter wrap up with the Demeter making it to London with no survivors aboard, but the way that these climaxes go down is pretty different. In the book and the movie, the Captain ties himself to the helm of the Demeter, hoping to reach the shores of England aboard his beloved ship, only to be found dead upon arrival. However, in Last Voyage, there's a lot more going on surrounding the Captain as we near the end of the story. The film finds Clemens and Anna trying to defeat Dracula, only having to jump ship and swim to shore. There's even an entire element about Anna slowly turning into a vampire, only to meet her fate in the final few minutes of the movie. From there, we never circle back to the movie's original framing device, with authorities discovering the wreckage of the Demeter. In the book, Dracula escapes the ship by turning into a dog, jumping over everyone outside the ship, and running off into the distance. In the movie, Dracula is last seen in London, stalking Clemens in a pub (also setting up a potential sequel — nice!).
From there, the novel goes back into its main storyline involving the Harkers and Van Helsing trying to defeat Dracula, whereas the movie seems to promise a sequel that will follow Clemens on his hunt for the vampire. Given its lack of ties to anything else in the Dracula novel, it seems only fair for it to set up its own path. Clemens isn't a character in the novel, so that doesn't really leave any more room for another straight adaptation. That being said, he was a good enough character that you could justify shifting elements of Chapter 7 to craft a new version of the classic Dracula chapter, so maybe we can do it all over again with another chapter in Stoker's novel. Bring on the sequel to The Last Voyage of the Demeter, we want it!