In a sentenceDracula eats a crew one sailor a night and the film waits politely between courses
The Demeter, a merchant schooner, sails from Varna for London with a cargo of unmarked crates and no questions asked about what is in them. When the local hands see the dragon crest on the boxes they walk off the dock, so Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) takes on Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a doctor who has trained hard and found no hospital willing to hire him, after Clemens pulls the captain’s grandson Toby (Woody Norman) from under a falling crate. First mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian) wants the ship for himself, the cook Joseph (Jon Jon Briones) wants God kept aboard, and the rest of the crew want the bonus promised for a fast crossing. A few nights out, the livestock are found torn open in the hold, and a young woman, Anna (Aisling Franciosi), is discovered half dead inside one of the crates.
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André Øvredal builds a real ship, fills it with good actors and then kills them in the order you expect, one a night, on a schedule. Handsome, well acted and rarely frightening; for those who like their horror wet and slow.
André Øvredal has taken one chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the log of the ship that carries the Count to England, and stretched it to 119 minutes. The film knows we know how the voyage ends: it opens with the Demeter aground off Whitby, a constable (Graham Turner) reading the log, then goes back. Zak Olkewicz and Bragi F. Schut’s screenplay treats the gap as Alien with rigging: a small crew, a thing in the hold, nowhere to go. It is a sound idea, well built and well acted, and hardly ever frightening.
The ship is the best thing in it. Edward Thomas has designed a Demeter of wet planking, coiled rope and a hold you climb down into on a ladder. Tom Stern lights it with lanterns and a cold blue at night, so faces come out of the dark and rain shows in the lamplight before people do. Susanne Vierkötter and Carlo Poggioli put the crew in wool and oilskin that looks slept in for a month. When the film lets us watch these men work the sails in bad weather, it earns its period.
The cast is better than the script deserves. Liam Cunningham plays Captain Eliot as a tired, decent man on his last run, and every line about his grandson Toby (Woody Norman) lands without pushing. David Dastmalchian’s Wojchek is all narrow suspicion, a first mate who wants the ship and resents a stranger who might be cleverer. Corey Hawkins gives Clemens a doctor’s patience and a doctor’s arrogance. Aisling Franciosi does what she can with Anna, who exists mostly to explain the thing in the crates.
That thing is where the film goes wrong. Javier Botet plays Dracula, and when Botet himself is in the frame, crouched in the hold, he is unsettling. When the creature takes off it turns into an animation, quick, weightless and lit by nothing on the ship. Øvredal shows it too early and too often, and once we have had a good look there is nothing to imagine. It has no voice, no charm and no interest in anyone beyond dinner, so the film has nothing to do but count the crew down.
And it counts slowly. The killings come one a night, and Patrick Larsgaard cuts the film as a calendar: a day of sailors arguing, a night of one going below alone, a morning of finding what is left. We were tense the first time, in the hold with the livestock, because the animals went quiet before anything moved and the film had the sense to wait. By the fourth night we were working out who would go next, and we were right every time, which is not what fear feels like. Bear McCreary’s score does not help; a chorus of low voices rises before every scare, so we braced before the film wanted us to.
The writers try to give the crew more than deaths. Clemens gets speeches about wanting the world to make sense, Joseph gets his Bible, and a strand about a Black doctor no hospital will take is raised and set down. None of it is badly played. All of it stops the ship dead while somebody explains what he believes.
Øvredal made The Autopsy of Jane Doe in 2016 with one room, two men and a body, and it frightened us badly. He has a whole ship here and less claustrophobia, because the film keeps cutting to the open deck when it should be jammed below with the crates. Ridley Scott hid his creature for most of Alien and gave it a crew who behaved like people who wanted to live; this film does neither.
The 15 is earned, with deaths nastier than the studio polish suggests, and there is a decent evening here for anyone who wants a tall ship in a storm with something in the hold. Watch it with the lights off, or Stern’s night scenes will vanish. Just do not come for Dracula. He is aboard, but only in the sense that the cargo is.
Most critics are unconvinced. The consensus is that stretching one chapter of Stoker’s novel into a two-hour film works better as an idea than as a picture. Where praise lands, it is on the setting: the 19th-century schooner and the close-quarters foreboding of a ship with something in the hold. Several reviews also single out the cast, Corey Hawkins and David Dastmalchian in particular, for committing to material that gives them little. The handful of admirers enjoy its mean streak and its nastiness with the gore.
The reservations cluster on the vampire. Many find him too visible, too fast and too much a CGI goblin, with none of Dracula’s seductiveness, and the scares telegraphed well in advance; the word slasher recurs. The spread is wide, from a B at The AV Club to IndieWire, which dismisses it as a stinker. Slant Magazine dissents from the majority in the other direction, finding no atmosphere at all.
Thick atmosphere and a gleeful mean streak make up for a premise with a foregone conclusion. It distinguishes itself with its delicious cruelty and willingness to go for the gore in nasty ways.
Read the full review →It is just Alien on a sailing ship but this new spin on Dracula has some bite and is worth the trip despite choppy seas. Solid direction, committed cast, and a central monster keep it engaging for horror fans.
Read the full review →The review highlights a rich sense of dread and spooky old-fashioned foreboding in this period horror but notes that the director unsuccessfully tries to add flimsy psychological depth and unconvincing emotional elements. The critic singles out the close-quarters suspense and gothic atmosphere for praise while faulting the lack of stakes for vampire fans.
Read the full review →The film fills in the blanks of the source chapter but renders Dracula as a mere goblin-like monster without his seductive qualities, resulting in a gory but parched experience stuck in a repetitive slasher groove. It praises the casting of David Dastmalchian and Corey Hawkins along with some nautical sequences and Expressionist nods, but finds the overall enterprise redundant and humorless.
Read the full review →The critic finds the film a squally scary movie set on a merchant ship transporting a vampire, but expresses frustration that characters do not confront the threat more decisively below deck. The update to the Dracula chapter is seen as only partially successful.
Read the full review →The critic sees this as a thin Dracula expansion that tries to be an Alien-like sea horror but ultimately has some bite. They single out the impressive 19th-century schooner set design and creature work for praise while noting over-reliance on CGI and unnecessary social commentary.
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1922 · The original ship-borne plague vampire, and still the one to beat for dread.
1958 · Hammer’s Count has the voice and the charm this one throws overboard.
2018 · Ice-bound ships, a shrinking crew and a thing outside; the slow version done properly.
2016 · Øvredal in one room with one body, and far more frightening for it.
921979 · The film this one keeps pointing at; a crew, a hold, and patience.
