How’s this for a novel strategy to adapting a traditional story? Somewhat than take, say, a breezy youngsters’s story like “The Hobbit” and stretch it previous its breaking level into an epic trilogy of flicks, “The Final Voyage of the Demeter” follows a really totally different mindset altogether. By increasing on a surprisingly brief chapter of “Dracula,” which deliberately retains a key second in Dracula’s reign of terror at a chilling distance from readers, Øvredal was capable of take full benefit of the artistic freedom afforded to him to inform a whole story between these strains of textual content.
That meant taking sure liberties to flesh out the crew of the Demeter, which solely amounted to 5 deckhands, a primary and second mate, a prepare dinner, and the captain himself within the guide. Whereas at the very least two of the named crew have been translated faithfully to the display — the early Dracula sufferer Petrofsky (Nikolai Nikolaeff) and the deeply superstitious Olgaren (Stefan Kapicic) — the movie goes out of its strategy to develop on Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) together with the ship’s first mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian) and non secular prepare dinner Joseph (Jon Jon Briones), introduce the captain’s harmless grandson Toby (Woody Norman), and provides us a brand new primary lead in Corey Hawkins’ ever-capable physician Clemens and the added wrinkle of a stowaway in Aisling Franciosi’s Anna.
Clemens and Anna aren’t ever talked about within the unique novel, marking the most important change the artistic crew on “Demeter” selected to make. Clemens offers audiences with a much-needed sympathetic determine to convey us into the story simply as he joins the crew of the Demeter. Anna, in the meantime, serves an expositional objective whereas folding in different layers of Dracula mythology — particularly the vampire’s “brides,” one in every of whom historically is called Anna in some takes on the story.