"The Demeter" was the ship in Bram Stoker's Dracula which carried Dracula from Hungary (actually, a port in Bulgaria, but he started out in Hungary) to England. As the novel is written in more or less epistolary form, and none of the main characters were aboard to make journal entries or writer letters describing the voyage, it is only mentioned in an interlude, from a news report of the Demeter wrecking on the coast of England, with a mysterious dog leaping ashore and running away, eluding strenuous efforts of well-meaning locals to find and take care of it. The cargo is picked up by the consignment party, and then a sequel article describes the only person found aboard was tied to the steering wheel with a rosary bound around his wrists, two days dead, per the medical examiner, when the ship crashed. In his pocket is the captain's log, with entries describing what seemed initially a promising voyage, only to gradually turn sinister, with the crew members disappearing one by one, accompanied by inexplicable phenomena, until the mate figures it out and goes to beard Dracula in his coffin. It does not go well, and the captain lashes himself to the wheel, with the rosary to prevent Dracula from interfering, so that he may complete his duty. He doesn't know, of course, that by doing so, he is abetting Dracula's purpose, but the point is, he makes an effort.

I would surmise the purpose of this incident is to illustrate the nature and character of Dracula, and how he is absolutely nothing but a blight and a monster. You can't even do mundane business, like a legal matter or a real estate deal, or transporting him to another country, without it going horribly for you, because he is the embodiment of evil.

Hollywood, of course, has spent considerable time over the last century plus, finding ways to miss that point entirely. For some reason, they see the story of a powerful evil predator, and start thinking about HIS point of view, and how cool he is. Or they fantasize about siccing him on people or things they dislike.

This film, however, was promoted as a straight-up horror flick, from the point of view of characters with very little known about their fates (though much can be presumed), giving considerably more flexibility in telling the story, while being respectful to the source material, and not being constrained too much by the plot.

This is 2023 Hollywood. That is not what we get. First of all, the star of the movie is not the most recognizable actor, Liam Cunningham, who as of now is in real danger of being typecast as naval captains in adaptations of popular speculative novels. It's not even the less famous, but still recognizable, David Dastmalchian, who has been getting a bunch of work lately, in Suicide Squad and Dune, most prominently. Nope, the main characters are two original ones, the ship's doctor, Clemmens, and an unexpected passenger, apparently brought aboard in one of the Dracula's boxes of dirt for a mid-voyage snack, Anna, played by the actress who played Lyanna Stark on Game of Thrones. Clemmens is played by the star of the ill-fated "24" reboot.

What was advertised as a claustrophobic "stuck on a ship with a monster" horror film, such as Alien, but with a vampire, instead becomes "Intersectionality vs Vampires". It's not Alien on a boat, because Alien has a whole crew of characters. This has the main black guy, the captain, the girl, the little boy, the Christian one and a bunch of anonymous bearded guys you can only tell apart because three of them are called by names (Olgarin, Abrams & Petrovsky) from the Captain's Log in the book. Needless to say, none of them do what is attributed to them in the book. They are just a bunch of red shirts to whom our hero, Mr. Clemmens, can demonstrate his superior education and intellect and relate his sob stories of discrimination as a black man in the 19th century. His background is almost hilarious in a wish-fulfilment character. He somehow matriculated to Cambridge and has a medical degree, but no one would hire him as a doctor (he couldn't open a private practice among the infamously downtrodden underclass of England, who were really not in a position to be picky? He never thinks of going to one of the UK's many, many colonies in Africa, where English is the language of the authorities, but his skin color is not unusual? ) He finally got a job offer from some foreign big shot and traveled all the way to accept, only to discover that they didn't realize he was black and the offer is rescinded. So he is begging on the docks in Bulgaria for a berth on the Demeter, which is hiring three new crew.

From the captain's log, in Dracula:
"...was somewhat anxious about crew. Men all steady fellows, who sailed with me before. (emphasis mine)"

Anyway, three new crew members.

Clemmens presents himself as having sailing experience, a medical degree and astronomical training. But the mate (Dastalmcachian) ignores him and hires three other guys, at least one of whom looks more like an animated cadaver than most depictions of Dracula. Clemmens goes to the actual wharf to moon over the Demeter, when the ancient-looking guy hired instead of him quits abruptly, recognizing Dracula's logo on one of the crates they are loading. The loading has a hitch and one of the crates falls, almost crushing li'l Toby, the captain's grandson, but Clemmens saves him, in sight of the captain, who hires Clemmens to replace the guy who quit.

Anna, the girl, gets a line about being a victim of the patriarchy, who sacrificed her to appease Dracula.

And that's it for these characters the movie decided to interject into the film, however implausibly, and needlessly. No development, no revelation of their character or anything. Just model victims, who are good at everything (needless to say, both are established as good with weapons when it comes time to hunt Dracula) and heroically dedicated to stopping the threat, where many of the canonical crew are more base and self-serving in their motivations or actions. It's understood that the other guys are there to die to raise the stakes for the heroes, who will be the only ones with a chance of surviving, and possibly the kid.

With the understanding that this is the kind of movie we are telling, it's not bad. Clemmens is just fine as the lead, Anna has the cookie cutter personality of every Slavic survivor chick, the kid acts exactly like every kid in this kind of movie. Dracula is disappointing. He's not so much an avatar of evil, as a simple predatory animal, looking something like a more humanoid bat when he is finally fully visible. His attacking style on his victims is all gory and messy, which seems to be the currently fashionable depiction of vampires, despite it being rather wasteful of blood, again, more like an feral animal, than a demonically intelligent entity. When you get right down to it, except for the fact that, since it's Dracula, you know they're not going to kill him, this could have been any horror monster movie set on a sailing ship.

This is fine if you just want a monster movie, with a couple of lines about wokeness anachronistically interjected (I prefer the concept of the sea as being a hardass environment where no one cares about your sob story, lots of crewmembers have one of their own that they think is rougher than yours, but also, no one really cares what you did or who you were as long as you pull your weight and do your job, but if you can't hack it, your class, credentials or status don't mean anything either). As an adaptation of Dracula, only the limitation of the film's scope prevents it from hijacking the story for the writers' own purposes, as so many recent adaptations have done. You can tell they'd love to do a sequel where they actually get to butcher the main body of Stoker's tale.