Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter ★★★

DRACULA will never die.

There have been God knows how many films featuring variations of Bram Stoker’s original creation, some brilliant and many others not so much.

The latest, Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter, is on the plus side of the blood sucker ledger thanks mainly to the combination of impressive production design and blending of practical and computer-generated effects.

It also helps greatly that the story is set in 1897 on a Russian merchant ship being used to transport crates from Rumania to London.

Unfortunately for the crew the rates contain the notorious vampire and a collection of victims for him to feed on during the passage.

When that source runs out, Dracula begins to stalk the ship, picking off the crew one by one until a final showdown with the few survivors as the ship heads through treacherous seas off the English coast.

Apparently, this is a pretty faithful adaptation of one chapter, ‘The Captain’s Log’, from Stoker’s original novel. All the characters are reasonably well drawn and there is plenty of atmosphere created by camera angles, lighting and the music score.

The always dependable Liam Cunningham leads the cast.