So this script is from 2017 or so, though it's been edited on and off since then. I was not being careful with the length. I would guess this was supposed to be for a 22 minute episode. What do you all think?

Ok, I thought about it and came to the conclusion this might be a good idea. So if you are prepared for a weird deep-dive into Renfield, welcome. My tl;dr take is this: Renfield had the potential to actually be good, but needed at least one more editing pass to tighten its focus. That's a shame, because I'd love to see this Nicholas Cage Dracula again.

To start, I wish to list the things that worked really well and deserve praise.
To begin, Nicholas Cage was perfect in this film, though not for reasons that people might have expected. From the trailers, and the movie being billed ostensibly as a horror-comedy, I was expecting a glorious, scenery-devouring performance the likes of which only Nicholas Cage can deliver. I was actually pleasantly surprised to find that Cage was not only doing a real performance, but also I am willing to go on record and say this is the most book-accurate Dracula ever put to screen. Cage conveys a sense of demonic aura, as well as the sort of off-putting, alienness that book Dracula oozed in most interactions (book Dracula is an off-putting creature, not an alluring one). Moreover, I think Cage also brought a curious and I believe never before seen on-screen aspect of the book Dracula’s character to light: his childishness. Van Helsing describes the vampire count as basically a demonic deviant with the mind of a child. Book Dracula is prone to emotional outbursts, and displays a sharply honed animal cunning, but seems to possess no capacity for grandscale plotting or scheming (small, concise planning and plotting, yes), unlike later depictions on the big screen. His threat is largely due to the fact that he is a walking contagion, apex predator, and possesses supernatural powers unknown to the “modern” world, allowing him free rein to infect an entire nation undetected. The script of Renfield also seems to allude to this, however shallowly, in that this particular Dracula constantly self-indulges with little planning ahead, and lands on the idea of world-domination in the exact same way a malicious six-year-old might when he realizes he’s kind of tired of getting attacked periodically and if he ruled the world, then that would stop happening. It LITERALLY has not occurred to him until recently in the movie, and I appreciate this deviation from the cinema norm. I will say this is my favorite portrayal of the character on screen to date. Also, I think I spotted a small nod to his performance in Vampire's Kiss, but blink and you'll miss it.
Secondly, the opening in which Renfield explains his backstory in a flashback is brilliant and wonderfully done. The sequence is a delightful homage to Tod Browning’s 1930s Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, where Cage and Hoult reenact scenes from the film. Hoult also impressed me by how WELL he was able to recreate Dwight Frye’s maniacal giggling when discovered upon the Demeter, and solidly convinced me he would do brilliantly in this current role. (If you have never seen that scene, here it is: https://youtu.be/OYSSB6QBBFU?t=139).

Thirdly, Nicholas Hoult deserves praise, though I will say I have never seen one of his performances that was not spot on. I have liked him in everything I have seen him in, and he does well with what he is given in this film (the eagle-eyed reader may notice something about what I just said there). Alas, despite the opening, Hoult does not recreate Frye’s performance through the rest of the film, though the character of Renfield in this film is not WRITTEN to be that performance. Renfield here is largely a different character.
Lastly, as far as modern movies go, this is among the best, but alas, that is not really praise. Here, I will transition to the bad, and say that had this movie come out in, say, the 90s, it would have been ignored for its crushing mediocrity and overall failure to solidly nail any one of its constituent narrative pieces. I believe that current ratings reflect that this film will end up in the memory-hole bin of history, where--alas for Cage’s performance--it belongs.

On to the actual critique:
It has been a bit difficult for me to decide how to begin, as the major failings of this film are twofold and it is hard to determine which ought to spoken about first. I will say that the two main failings are, unsurprisingly: direction and the script.
I will begin by saying I actually LIKE the direction, however it is at odds I think with what the script intended. The direction of the film is as a dark horror comedy complete with ridiculous, over the top and incredibly fake-looking explosions of cg blood. [SPOILER: to give an idea, a character is actually kicked so hard in the stomach that his bones shatter and his liquefied organs come out...both ends, to put it politely. It’s that sort of film]. HOWEVER, where this direction fails is in the resolution and the conceit of the script that there is a heartfelt psychological aspect to Renfield’s inner conflict, and this does NOT work. The film makes use of bathos as a tool for humor, and in a dark comedy, that is perfectly acceptable. Bathos, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is “(especially in a work of literature) an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.” Use of jokes to punctuate what otherwise is a serious scene, is a form of “pulling the rug out” from under story beats. It conveys to the audience that there is nothing particularly serious going on. Again, in a comedy, this is wonderful. However, this technique does NOT play well with attempts at sincerity. There is a great analysis of The Last Jedi that explores the bathos aspect of that film in particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuuDTnMPMgc.

Horror-comedy is an incredibly difficult genre to pull off (as well I know, as I did my best in my friest book, Dracula's Guest), as horror and comedy are doing literally opposite jobs. Horror requires on the building of tension, and comedy relies on the constant release of tension. This is a balancing act, and one which I do spend time thinking about, since my book series is an example of a horror-comedy itself (though the balance of these two genres changes, and I introduce drama and other elements later). To make dissonant tones work, you largely have to be very judicious not to let the two touch each other unless the jarring juxtaposition of the two actually serves to emphasize ONE of the two of them.

To return to Renfield specifically, and to bathos in particular, bathos constantly tells the audience to not take things seriously, and the more it is used, the MORE audiences will take that message away. And this ESPECIALLY does not work when most of the scenes that center around the central theme of the film—that there is a real-life, psychological relationship which Renfield must overcome, and so his [SPOILER self-affirmation at the end to free himself by use of what he has learned at therapy can ONLY work if the film does not constantly make jokes out of his therapy sessions.] To continue with the [SPOILER Dracula’s death is actually played for laughs. I repeat: the defeat of the final boss, so to speak, of the film, is played as a JOKE]. It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a heartfelt “the friends we made along the way” sort of moral meant in total sincerity when the rest of the film constantly pokes fun at virtually EVERYTHING, and ESPECIALLY at the friends you've been making along the way. I feel this resulted because the director had a desire for horror-comedy, but the script itself was less committed to that. A better example of well-defined themes and character arcs about the self, as well as a horror-comedy can be seen in Shaun of the Dead.

Which brings me to the script itself. This, by far, is the REAL problem. Overall, the story is perfectly serviceable, but there are key and critical elements that absolutely do not work, and worse, there are amateurish writing mistakes. This is all a shame, as I think with at least one more final edit, this could have actually been a REALLY fun movie, a la all the best of the action comedies of the 90s, or even a fairly well-done psychological study. However, the script lacks focus both on character and ESPECIALLY on properly building and executing a theme.

To begin: the themes. There are theoretically two, since the script lacks focus. There is a definite attempt at “self-affirmation” and “self-confidence” and “moving on” which is presented sincerely, though actually quite badly. The first major problem with this is that the movie INSISTS that Renfield and Dracula are in a “co-dependent relationship” which it repeats ad nauseum. The reason it REPEATS it, is because this is not demonstrated in the film in any tangible way. Dracula and Renfield actually have very little screen time together, which is a crying shame not just because we miss out on more of Cage as Dracula, but because there is no way to see the purported codependency. For a look at what a REAL co-dependent relationship looks like, I direct you here:  https://www.fortbehavioral.com/addiction-recovery-blog/9-warning-signs-of-a-codependent-relationship/#:~:text=Published%3A%20May%2025%2C%202021,people%20with%20substance%20use%20issues. What is immediately apparent to viewers is that Dracula does NOT need Renfield. In fact, once Dracula fails getting Renfield back after one attempt, he just goes and grabs another minion. Further undermining any understanding of this relationship is Cage’s performance. Cage brings a sense of transcendent evil, of the demonic and supernatural, and it is therefore impossible to say to what extent Renfield was seduced to serve him because of some hypnotic suggestion and what the film claims is the actual reason: he was just greedy and ambitious and Dracula was rich (I will expand on this later).
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For his part, Renfield’s express desire as stated and as demonstrated, is that he’s tired of living like this but can’t leave because he’s afraid Dracula will kill him. That is not co-dependency, that’s a hostage situation. Renfield has no deep, burning desire to be of service and to help Dracula per se, he's stuck doing it by external circumstance. There are definitely scenes where the film TRIES to show that Renfield lacks self-confidence, but this character trait only presents itself when Dracula is around, and to return to direction, there is certainly a hint that there is more to the fact that Renfield folds like a house of cards than simply lack of confidence and self-esteem (such as: Dracula has some hypnotic abilities). For the rest of Renfield’s interactions, he is quippy, kind, able to crack jokes, and is pretty open about his situation to Rebecca, none of which portrays a broken, emotionally manipulated co-dependent. The closest we ever see is what is presented in the trailer, though in the trailer, critically, he says “I need to get out of a TOXIC relationship” which is certainly where he is.

Considering that the film tries on the one hand to poke fun at people seeking support to get out of their codependent relationships and ALSO convey a sense of relief that Renfield successfully uses the sort of empty platitudes presented in his group self-therapy sessions to [SPOILER help defeat Dracula.] (This is especially egregious when the film makes a gag out of Renfield’s use of a self-help book as a Bible against Dracula in Act 2 which of course fails miserably, as one would expect it to against a demon piloting a corpse, only for self-affirmation to be his rallying cry at the end to free himself from Dracula before [SPOILER comedically bludgeoning Dracula into bits with assorted tools]).

I think this incongruity may be due in part to Cage’s performance. As written, I could see an actor portraying Dracula as a psychological manipulator and narcissist more than a transcendent evil, but at this point, it is the director’s job to figure out how to work all of that into a coherent film. Johnny Depp made Jack Sparrow into more than just a vaudeville-esque comedy-relief character, after all. Guillermo del Toro quite famously rewrites his scripts to better match his actors’ performances in order to strengthen the entire work. It falls to the creative team to decide whether they want to keep Cage’s performance as-is (which is the correct choice) and therefore rewrite the script to match, or to tell him to give a different performance which matches a different vision instead.

This brings me to another, extremely irritating flaw of the script: it LOVES its exposition, and loves to tell, not show. There is a particularly egregious example following the introduction of Rebecca Quincy, the deuteragonist of the film. She is the least-well realized character, but I will return to characterization later. After Rebecca (I refuse to call her Quincy, not simply because the film forgets her surname, but because this attempt to reference the Texan from Stoker’s novel doesn’t work because Rebecca IS NOT Quincy in any way) arrests Teddy Lobo (son of one of the local crime bosses) and rants about his getting away from justice, the police chief has a long discussion with her about her dead father, and how he was killed by the mob, and the chief will take care of her, et cetera, et cetera. The exposition is painful, and made ALL THE MORE PAINFUL because the film has the good sense to have the camera follow Rebecca out of the room and linger on the photo of her obviously dead father hanging on the wall, which would have been all anyone really needed to get an idea what her motivation was. The scene which Rebecca walks into IMMEDIATELY AFTERWWARDS is one with her sister, who is an FBI agent who more or less says “Hey, OUR DAD WAS MURDERED BY THE MOB, AND YOU AND I BOTH WANT JUSTICE.” It is like the edited Star Wars A New Hope scene in which Han Solo encounters Jabba right after shooting Greedo. This script needed an editor. 

There are more instances of “tell, don’t show” in this film, especially when it comes to explaining backstory and character motivation, the wonderful opening scene recreating Tod Browning’s film excluded. When Renfield finally explains why he came to work for Dracula, we end up with another instance of this, but more critically, the script undermines its own conceit. Renfield confesses to Rebecca that the reason he was manipulated by Dracula is because he was a young and ambitious real estate agent who made an excuse of trying to make money for his wife and daughter, but ultimately wanted it for himself. I might counter that it is not exactly outside the norm for any young, aspiring real estate agent to want to close on the deal of his entire career, and so this is not indicative of a character flaw per se. Moreover, this is meant to serve as evidence of how he and Dracula became codependent, which is baffling, because Dracula offers him no further money so far as we are shown (or know of based on outside media like the book and 1930s movie), and Renfield is perfectly content to leave Dracula and live in a quaint little apartment. He never complains about a lack of money for himself personally, outside of going "yeah, we're out of it," and never pursues money at any point in the film.

This given character flaw becomes even MORE confused when, in the group therapy session which directly leads Renfield to leave Dracula he repeats an affirmation that HE (Renfield) will grow to full power, instead of Dracula. He actually shouts this out loud more than once. If ambition was his flaw, one would expect that this affirmation would play into it, not free him from its hold over him.

This is as good a time as any to move on to characterization: another failing of this film. Besides Renfield, most characters in this film are underdeveloped, though in the case of Teddy Lobo and his mother, this is fine as they are basically one-note villains.

Dracula is difficult to read because he spends very little time on screen, and because it is unclear what the film wants us to make of him. The script more or less INSISTS that he is in a codependent relationship with Renfield. However, so far as I can tell, he is only in the most utilitarian sense: that he needs someone to help him occasionally with sunlight or getting him food if he’s too weak to get it himself. Bafflingly, the film tries to imply that Dracula might ACTUALLY have specific attachment to Renfiled in particular in the two scenes where he tries to manipulate Renfield, undercutting him and filling him with guilt, but the moment this doesn’t work, he simply leaves to get other minions. However, he DOES try to exact revenge on Renfield specifically, though whether this is because he had SOME sort of attachment to Renfield emotionally (in a human sense) or simply because he is just demonically malicious and likes causing emotional pain (and knows Renfield VERY well, making him a perfect target) is unclear. Dracula can shed human tears (instead of weeping blood, which is A decision, for sure. A bad one) if the situation calls for it, but these are clearly, utterly fake, making it difficult to decipher what he actually FEELS at any time besides unwholesome, sadistic, malice. Moreover, the shedding of human tears to manipulate Renfield implies they must have positive times together, which we are NEVER shown, and Renfield doesn't expand on. So far as we can see, there is a master and unwilling slave relationship, nothing more. If the tears work, the implication is that RENFIELD has some reason to WANT to maintain a relationship with Dracula, though again I ask "why?" Renfield goes so far to say--of the tears--that "maybe he means it this time." If, by implication, Dracula means that he really likes Renfield and cares about him, and that they are partners, this undermines Renfield's stated motives to escape, and also his stated reasons for falling to begin with, but more on this at the end.

This brings us to Renfield, who is a bit of a mess. And what a shame, as he could have been a really interesting character. His central motive remains that he wishes to get away from Dracula, but the WHY is difficult for the film to articulate, especially given the baffling “ambition and greed” as initial motives. When we first meet him, Renfield’s explanation of the situation betrays that he is simply TIRED of being a minion of Dracula's and constantly running, though he does deliver a baffling line about how Dracula’s fake tears might be sincere "this time," implying that Dracula, on occasion, is nice to him. The script, as ever, never shows a single instance of this, so it remains another “tell, don’t show” issue. Renfield’s inner conflict at the beginning is that he is tired of the job, but can’t quit because, as the film shows us, he worries Dracula will kill him. In fact, when he tries to suggest a change in plans to Dracula, his vampire master casually disembowels him in disgust (again making us question the film's attempt to imply any sort of "codependency" or "positive" aspect to this relationship). Renfield doesn’t seem to be particularly conflicted about killing people that he thinks ought to die (people he’s decided are bad people), and it is unclear if this is because he just doesn’t care about them or he’s become jaded to murder because he’s been doing it for more than a century. The fact that he’s basically a serial killer for Dracula is practically played as a joke by Rebecca later in the film (more on that in my section on fixes). 

For the self-affirmation pep-talk he delivers at the end to work narratively, it has to be that he is staying with Dracula SOLELY because of his lack of self-esteem, which he has recovered somehow (though I suppose through group therapy. Let that sink in). However, as stated above, Hoult’s performance does not precisely show a consistently broken man. Renfield has no problem approaching Rebecca on their first meeting and praising her up and down, tracking her down later to help her, getting an apartment, new wardrobe, etc. the moment he gets the slightest push to stand up for himself. He does not hesitate to join forces with Rebecca to take down Dracula and the mob, either. There is no question in his mind that he has to stop the monster who has been controlling him for the better part of a century and has theoretically manipulated him through emotional and psychological abuse or through literal powers to murder potentially hundreds or more people. He does not ruminate on any of this, the only guilt he feels is that he abandoned his wife and daughter more than a century ago. The script TELLS us one thing, but it SHOWS us something else. More on this in my “fixes.”

Rebecca is underdeveloped, but no surprise there. Unlike many modern female characters, she is a profoundly flawed character, which is partly played for laughs. The only reason I say that she is still poorly written is that the FILM does not seem to be aware that she has flaws, as her arc is basically flat, and the film does not call her out for her abrasiveness except once, in a “tell, don’t show” way when she claims she insulted her sister once at a party. She remains single-minded (monomaniac, actually) and rigidly upright, with neither trait being explored either as a foil for Renfield, or to expose her “spine” and have her overcome either of her two major shortcomings (abrasiveness or monomania with regards to the mob, which--oddly enough--is not a desire for revenge per se for the murder of her father). All that is really needed to fix Rebecca is simply to have one of her flaws be explored and either overcome in a heroic arc, or fallen to in a villainous arc to make her work.

The broken climax. This section will be the most full of SPOILERS so please skip ahead if you don’t want to know more about the ending of this movie or about Bunraku (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1181795/), feel free to watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Js7-rSrHsw). The final fight between Renfield and Rebecca and Dracula and the mob was, to put it bluntly, a bit of a mess.

Before I explain why, let me talk a bit about Bunraku. In the film, an unnamed gunslinger with no gun (Josh Hartnett) comes to a town suffering under the tyranny of a vicious murderer and his gang of killers. Hartnett has come to settle some sort of personal vendetta against the top killer, played by Ron Perlman. Gackt plays a samurai who does not want to use his sword, who has come to this town to meet with his uncle and cousin, who run a Japanese restaurant. It turns out that Ron Perlman’s favorite restaurant is the one run by Gackt’s uncle, and Ron Perlman’s right hand man, a devious killer with ambitions to run the town himself, starts harassing the restaurant. This brings Gackt into conflict with the Ron Perlman’s right-hand man primarily, and Ron Perlman himself secondarily, but most obviously aligns him with Josh Hartnett’s goal of taking down the killers in the town. When they finally get to the climax, Gackt goes to kill the right hand man, who has kidnapped his cousin and intends to rape her, while Josh Hartnett goes off to kill Ron Perlman. Gackt struggles but manages to overcome the right hand man, while on the other hand Josh Hartnett is nearly killed almost immediately in his fight with his antagonist and is barely alive. What is clear from this film, where there are two protagonists, with Hartnett being the primary protagonist and Gackt the deuteragonist, is that neither ONE of them would ever have been able to take down the main villain, but together they could. Moreover, it is clear either of them could probably have taken down all the big bad’s minions, especially in one-on-one fights, of which the film provides many examples. It is only when Gackt comes to check on Hartnett that Hartnett is able to defeat the big bad. Though Gackt’s contribution to the fight is minimal, it is necessary in a story with TWO PROTAGONISTS DRAWN TOGETHER IN THIS WAY to have both contribute to the finale in a way that works on a personal and emotional level, while not undermining the main protagonist TOO much.

You may be wondering why I spent some time talking about Bunraku. Let me first explain the major plot points of Renfield:

Renfield opens with Renfield wanting to get away from Dracula, who is a bad guy. Rebecca wants to take down the mob because they murdered her father. Renfield bumps into Rebecca, and when he sees her bravely facing down Teddy Lobo (ie: part of the mob) who is going to shoot her dead, Renfield is inspired to stand up to Dracula. He helps Rebecca survive her encounter, then leaves Dracula. Dracula joins forces with the mob because he lost Renfield, and so the enemies for the two protagonists are now Dracula at the head of the mob, with Teddy Lobo as his new right hand man. This means that the deuteragonist is now completely aligned with the main protagonist in going to fight the big bad, Dracula, in order to defeat the secondary antagonist, Teddy Lobo. So far, so good.

However, Rebecca spends all of a few seconds fighting Lobo before running off to find her sister, who has been kidnapped by the mob, only to then have an extended scene with Dracula. In the meanwhile, RENFIELD has to kill Teddy Lobo, though the two have little to do with each other on any personal level. Then, Renfield goes to try to kill Dracula. It turns out Rebecca was never going to give in to him, fails to kill him, then Dracula kills or critically wounds Renfield, Rebecca revives him with Dracula’s blood, Renfield pointlessly punches Dracula until they manage to trap him, then shoot him like a fish in a barrel.

Between the two stories, it is surely clear which one is better, but now it is time to move on to my fixes.

Let’s start with the finale, and how with a few small changes, this climax could have REALLY worked.

Renfield has an established connection with Dracula, while Rebecca has an established connection with Teddy Lobo specifically and the mob generally (in the way that Josh Hartnett had a connection to Ron Perlman, while Gackt had a connection with Killer No. 2 primarily, and only Ron Perlman secondarily). Rebecca’s explicit motivation is to bring the mob to justice because they murdered her father, and earlier in the film, Teddy Lobo presented himself as the “face” of the mob to her specifically. She arrested him, and he later tracked her down to murder her and mock her father’s death. That is two confrontations, and in good storytelling, one would assume there would be a final confrontation with him, in which this back and forth, her on top, then him, would culminate in a final defeat of SOMEONE. Personal stakes are always more powerful than vague ones. Small, comprehensible stakes, and personal connection are key to powerful storytelling. That’s the reason the finale of Captain America Civil War hits harder than any superhero sky laser extravaganza. Internal conflict manifested as external conflict also hits harder than purely external conflict, hence why the finale of the Dark Knight, which has two small ferries being the manifestation of Gotham’s—and by extension ALL of humanity’s soul—on trial hits much harder than The Dark Knight Rises’ random nuke which will just wipe everyone out no matter what.

The problem with the existing finale isn’t just this surface-level mistake, of course. It also stems from the muddled characterization we’ve seen thus far. The main issue actually falls on Rebecca. As stated earlier, she is an objectively flawed character, but the film does not treat her as such, and makes no effort to giver her an arc. Had attention been paid to her, it would have been all the more obvious that in a situation where she should have some sort of denouement, a confrontation with the mob is the obvious and sole choice. If I were to suggest a rewrite, I would alter the confrontation thusly: Renfield and Rebecca arrive to fight the Dracula-mob alliance, to find that Teddy Lobo now has Renfield powers, as per the film. Teddy Lobo’s mother, the current head of the mob, is likewise still present in the building. Rather than a brief interchange between Rebecca and Teddy, this should be her main fight. Renfield can be occupied keeping all the other new Renfield-powered minions at bay in order to give Rebecca this personal payoff. A hero is only as good as the villain they defeat, and though Teddy Lobo is an emotional man-baby, even without powers he is still a physical threat to Rebecca thanks to the size and sex difference, and he did almost shoot her directly in the face to kill her earlier, as well as mocking her father’s death. Recall that her father’s murder is core to her motivations as a character, and if an arc had been planned for her, would also be where her “spine” is located. Moreover, she has more experience seeing Renfield in action, and so a better grasp of his powers than she would have of Dracula, whom she has never seen or encountered throughout the film, and a properly resourceful character could use what they have learned to turn the tables. 

An aside here about character arcs for those interested in writing: proper character arcs involve applying constant pressure to a character in order to expose their “core” (what I called the "spine" earlier) which inevitably is where the main thesis of the arc is located. The character holds some worldview or belief very dearly, but there is a flaw baked into it. When all the illusions about the worldview and its flaw are exposed by increased pressure, the character must then make a decision to reject the flaw in the worldview and overcome it (a heroic arc) or else embrace the flaw and let it subsume the worldview (a villainous arc). (For a good video on arcs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1crdZI5Af0&t=4s).

In the case of Rebecca, the film seems to want to have her go through an arc of not letting mourning over a dead family alienate her from her remaining, living family connections. She and her sister are MEANT to be at odds and Rebecca’s monomaniacal desire to bring the mob to justice for the death of her father is meant to be distancing her from her sister. However, the movie does not SHOW this, as she and her sister still talk, and her sister has such a good relationship that she doesn't even need to forgive Rebecca for insulting her, and is ready to leap to her aid at a moment’s notice. The failure to expose a theoretical flaw (sacrificing current family relationships in pursuing a dead one) is what her confrontation with Dracula at the end hinges on. Dracula takes Rebecca aside, having killed her sister, and offers to bring the sister back to life and help Rebecca take down the mob if she serves him.

This doesn’t work for a number of reasons: Rebecca has been shown to be superbly upright and righteous throughout the film, unwavering in her goal to bring the mob to JUSTICE, NOT to get revenge or compromise any principles at all. There has been no hint that she is willing to do something underhanded until the plot literally gives her no other ground on which to stand. Narratively, she is placed in direct opposition with every other cop in her precinct, as 100% of them are corrupt and owned by the mob and she is the ONLY ONE who can resist corruption. She is also shown to be intelligent, cunning, and devious in pretending to acquiesce to a temptation to embrace corruption, while ultimately rejecting it. So there is no reason for an audience member to believe she will take Dracula up on his offer. Think about how The Rise of Skywalker attempts to sell the audience on the idea that Rey might turn evil. This temptation falls flat because Rey has demonstrated nothing but upright mercy, goodness, etc. throughout two previous films. And though Dracula expressly stated earlier in the film that he wants to hurt Renfield for his betrayal by harming all the people he cares about, it is not clear how getting Rebecca to serve him instead of Renfield is the best way to do this, considering that Rebecca’s death would more negatively affect Renfield than her servitude to Dracula (a proposition I cannot expect anyone believed was going to happen). Dracula does not turn any of Renfield's therapy friends, for example, he simply slaughters them. 

Before I present my complete finale fix, I will address Renfield’s part in it. His fighting Teddy Lobo first, and Dracula second, is a baffling decision, as he has virtually no emotional investment in the mob boss’s son beyond the fact that they’ve seen each other a few times. Teddy Lobo serves only as a physical obstacle to him, but has nothing to do with Renfield’s arc, so a fight with him is not as satisfying as one that presents an emotional payoff. Worse, the film seems to be trying to say "hey, Renfield, how does it feel now that you've been replaced? Dracula doesn't need you" which runs counter to his stated goal of getting away from Dracula, and has nothing to do with the forced "greed and ambition" flaw the film tries to pretend is at his core. His core motivation is getting away from Dracula, and when Dracula will not let him get away cleanly, he must confront his monster, so to speak, so what is the point of having another character thumb his nose and say "Now I'M Dracula's minion. How does THAT feel, loser??"

Since Dracula previously killed the people Renfield cares about in order to hurt him, Renfield's concern for Rebecca ought to be for her physical safety, not whether she becomes another version of him. The film WANTS to present Dracula as a character who is so completely charming that he can manipulate anyone by using their flaws against them, but does not show it on screen. Moreover, Renfield’s confessed reason for falling to Dracula’s manipulation: greed and ambition, are never explored, expanded on, or even SEEN for the entirety of the film, making that assertion ring hollow. In the meta, by relying on audience knowledge of Browning’s film for the backstory, the implication for Renfield’s fall to Dracula is that he was overcome by the power of supernatural evil thanks to naivety, NOT ambition. Besides his ruthless killing, Renfield remains a mild-mannered, kind, polite, and proper person with no ambition at all except freedom, and this does not work with the film’s STATED intentions.

Fixing Renfield’s involvement at the climax relies on fixing his muddled characterization throughout the film. If the movie wants to stick to the “therapy” ending, it would need to stop undermining therapy throughout, and work to show more of Renfield’s relationship with Dracula, and more importantly, humanize Dracula to some extent so the relationship more closely resembles real human interactions. I will argue that any story that boils down to “believe in yourself, you are totally worth it” will always ring hollow, but ESPECIALLY when the film wants to be funny and not focus on the very real emotional and psychological torment of the victim in the relationship. For that ending to work, the film would have to largely be a serious psychological study, and far more grounded (Actually, Whiplash might have been a good springboard for a film that wants to be that, especially if this film wants to also have "greed and ambition" be Renfield's underlying flaws). As it is, I think the film is strongest when serving as a horror-comedy, and I will argue for a total embrace of that direction.

Because of the dark comedy aspects, I would also argue that a darker arc would be appropriate here. With a protagonist who is, for all intents and purposes, a serial killer working for one of the greatest and most famous monsters of pop culture, a darker arc would also be appropriate. In addition, the sort of bathos-filled comedic elements here are best served by an upside-down kind of story. Shrek is a perfect example of this, where it spends the entire runtime pulling the rug out from under traditional fairytales, taking virtually nothing seriously except the concept of love, but still upending the typical trope in that the princess marries an ogre rather than a prince.

For the movie Renfield, I would point to two seeds which were planted, but never grew to anything. One, the stated “ambition” that Renfield apparently had which caused him to fall to Dracula’s manipulation to begin with, and the very curious scene at therapy where the therapist tells Renfield to embrace that is HE, rather than Dracula who will “grow to full power.” (Additionally, Renfield is shown to have basically no qualms about murdering people he has deemed “bad” or who hurt people he cares about, which ought to make him somewhat morally ambiguous, and would lead to the ending I propose as a fix).

To return to fixing the final confrontation, I would argue that Rebecca confronts Teddy Lobo, and through use of her resourcefulness and cunning (as already displayed earlier in the film), is able to overcome his brashness and stupidity. She then would be confronted with a different character decision, as Teddy Lobo’s mother, who is present, would come to plead for her son, suddenly placing Rebecca in the position of mobster about to kill someone and harm a family member: ie, a reversal of what happened with her father. This would require her to evaluate a different flaw, in this case, a hunger or thirst for revenge and whether she is willing to do anything it takes to achieve it. The best choice of course is that she decides NOT to become what she hates, and instead uses this leverage to take down the mob by getting the mob boss to acquiesce to her in exchange for her son’s life. In the meanwhile, as with Bunraku, Renfield is unable to defeat Dracula single-handedly, because of course he can’t. If he could, then the audience would wonder why he was so scared of Dracula for so long. As in the film, Rebecca could then come to Renfield’s aid and I would even argue to keep the scene where she uses the information she’s been taught about Dracula’s blood in order to revive Renfield, as the scene currently exists.

At this point, the film could have relied more on the book, though its relationship with the book and the character of Dracula at large is in my section on nitpicks. In Bram Stoker’s work, Dracula preying on someone does not turn them into a vampire like him, but a weaker version. To become one like him requires the person to imbibe Dracula’s blood. I thought for sure the film was doing this, as the blood which drips onto Renfield to revive him in the climax falls directly onto and into his mouth. Given the earlier “I [Renfield] will rise to full power”, his ambiguous morality, and supposed ambition, him becoming a vampire on par with Dracula would be an obvious direction to take. In the film, as it exists, Renfield even breaks off Dracula’s fangs, and Dracula actually tells him “YOU CAN’T TAKE MY FANGS!” in an almost meta nod to this possibility. Obviously, the film instead chooses to have Renfield use self-affirmation while punching Dracula pointlessly with his own fangs, instead of taking them for himself and then supplanting Dracula.

My fix, of course, would be this second route. This would also keep Renfield and Rebecca aligned after the conclusion, as Renfield seems to have little to no qualms killing “bad people” and Rebecca still wants to take down the mob. Renfield CANNOT rejoin society, as the film points out the FBI and INTERPOL have his DNA and fingerprints and actually think he is an international serial killer who has been operating for a very long time (which he more or less is). The completed story for both characters would then be Renfield becomes the new Dracula, though one aimed more towards “good” with Rebecca becoming his Renfield. The fact that they don’t know how to kill Dracula leaves the path for a sequel, just as in the film, but gives a better springboard to launch from, as the evil people of the world would of course want to join with a returned Dracula if there’s a younger version of him going around killing them all.

Nitpicks and minor problems:

This film is very unclear to what extent ordinary people know about Dracula in the meta. The name seems to require no introduction, implying that this film exists in a universe where movies about Dracula, even books, and other media, are commonplace. This is frustrating, as the film never takes the time to establish what should and shouldn’t be known about Dracula at any given time. Though the film nods constantly to the book and the 30s film, it also gives Dracula a totally different set of weaknesses (sunlight is the ONLY weakness given him in this movie), while not providing most of his well-known powers. This means that fans of the character are left scratching their heads, wondering what, if anything, from the source material applies, while it is simultaneously unclear what characters WITHIN the narrative itself know, and it is impossible to understand anyone's relationship or understanding of Dracula with anyone else. Rebecca seems to know without explanation that Dracula eats people, but still needs to have Renfield explain the specifics of how Dracula manipulates people to her, since this is not part of the meta so far as I'm aware. The mob boss herself addresses Dracula as “prince” which is quite odd when Dracula introduces himself as “Count” elsewhere, and no one introduces him as "prince" in that scene, implying that she has some historical knowledge and has conflated Count Dracula with Vlad the Impaler, which is something I assume mostly only nerds would be able to do. All this only serves to muddy the character and world and our understanding of the relationship between Dracula and Renfield, and between Dracula and the world at large.

Dracula does kiss her hand, though, lol.

One really petty nit, but also a seriously missed opportunity. For some reason, the film spends what might be as many as thirty seconds on a SKA joke, and how lame it is as a musical genre. This joke exists in the context of one of the group therapy attendees who is in a codependent relationship explaining that her SO loves SKA. After wasting time hating on this obscure music genre, the film cuts to the SO in question, with a visual reference to SKA as well. Renfield shows up to kill him, and oddly enough, no SKA plays (that I recall) while Renfield kills the man and his friends. Considering the dark comedy aspects, I would have certainly thought the film would do at least that much, as it feels like a missed opportunity. Imagine, after all, dying while some SKA music plays loudly and diagetically in the background (it was on his playlist, which accidentally gets turned all the way up for the ensuing beat down).

The soundtrack was absolutely forgettable, but so are most soundtracks these days. However, setting the film in New Orleans afforded the chance to add character and spice the film with local music and flavor, but nothing appears on film. The best we get is the Mulates bar. No nightlife, no food, no city history, nothing. What an absolute wasted opportunity, and given that New Orleans is a vampire hub in Americana, what an even FURTHER wasted opportunity. (For more on why modern soundtracks are terrible, this may illuminate you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vfqkvwW2fs).

In the end, all I feel is disappointment, because the bones were there for this film to REALLY work. I'm sorry Cage and Hoult, I would have liked to see you both in these roles again

 All right, so here’s my long take on The Last Voyage of the Demeter. The tl;dr is: there were definitely some good elements indicating this could have actually been a good movie, but as it is, overall it is a poorly constructed mess and rather boring.

To start, I wish to list the things that worked really well and deserve praise.

The production design and especially the practical effects were very well done. This movie had the best-looking dead animal props (that weren’t just real dead animals) that I’ve seen in a film. The burns on [spoiler: Liam Cunningham] later in the movie were also incredible. Even though I’m going to rag on it later, technically the creature design for Nosferatu (Dracula is credited as Dracula/Nosferatu, and I refuse to call the creature Dracula for reasons I’ll explain later) is pretty good. Some of the closeups of its face here and there showed some real talent in the design. Some of the locations were very pretty (perhaps TOO pretty, as there is a scene at the end set in a remarkably attractive and clean late 1890s London street). In addition, this soundtrack was pretty good as far as modern movie soundtracks go. It had a flavor, I could actually hear it, and it wasn’t background noise. Some themes were decadent and over the top, but this IS a Dracula story (supposedly) so a certain amount of on-the-nose excess works, in my opinion. You can listen here, but the main theme (the first track) gives you an idea where the soundtrack is at its strongest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8kTVlrXRkU&list=PLRW80bBvVD3XMKPl2NHG0EmzUF4ENQ_4m&index=1. I think having an over the top soundtrack works in a gothic horror. Certainly better than the very blah Dracula musical that Broadway produced way back. The Last Voyage of the Demeter’s soundtrack feels like it is deliberately meant to sound very “Hans Zimmer” a la the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Bear McCreary produced it, and given the man seems to have a career of “writing music to sound like other composers” I can’t help but wonder if that was the idea. Regardless, the soundtrack is a standout in this modern wasteland of air conditioner noise. The first twenty minutes or so of the film are actually pretty good, and I recognized a sort of homage to “Alien” in its structure (on looking up more about the film, this seems to be intentional).

On that note, the film is actually at its strongest in the beginning when it first sets everything up. We get a chance to meet the characters, though Clemens’ (Corey Hawkins) introduction is actually not great. One of the things I liked the best about the beginning (though more on this later in the review) was the main character, Clemens, and Captain Elliot engaging in the beginning of a thematic argument. I have not seen a movie try to do a thematic argument in this vein in so long it actually stood out to me. Clemens claims he is looking for a way to make sense of the world, and is presented as an aggressive materialist doctor who thinks that everything CAN be understood. Captain Elliot, the old sea captain, tells him that “not everything can be” which is a GREAT thematic argument for a DRACULA work. An additional set up for a subtheme is the friction of aggressive modernization/industrialization vs appreciation of the old ways and sadness of their passing as they get steamrollered by rampant “progress.” The characters wax poetic about the old sailing ship, Demeter, and how out of fashion she is in the wake of modern ships, and that she will likely have no place in just a short while. Clemens also tells Captain Elliot’s grandson that “progress cares not for joy,” as a beautiful little nod to this set up. For those who haven’t read Bram Stoker’s Dracula and so are not aware, the book has a theme of the modern crashing into the ancient and mysterious, the rational age of science being confronted by the supernatural and unexplainable, etc. It’s largely where its horror derives. So when I heard all this happening in the beginning of the film, I was tentatively excited, and pleasantly surprised to have my basement-level expectations shattered. In those first twenty minutes or so, my hopes raised to incredible heights; hoping against hope that perhaps the film wasn’t doing well because modern audiences aren’t used to this sort of storytelling anymore, and that there was a secret gem here. This hope was to be crushed utterly after Act Two began.

As an aside about “Alien,” that film has been described as a “haunted house in space” and is an excellent example of how to do a haunted house, since the question is always “why don’t the characters just leave the house?” When I first heard about this movie, I thought that being on a sailing ship out at sea would be a good way to address that question, but we will address why this DOESN’T actually work in the case of this film and its construction.

As far as performances, they were largely serviceable, and no one was “bad” per se (more on this later). The standouts were of course Liam Cunningham (Captain Elliot), whom the film aggressively refused to make use of, and David Dastmalchian (Wojchek) who I first noticed in the Dark Knight and have been pulling for him ever since. Dastmalchian gets a lot to do, which was nice.

Ok, on to what didn’t work.

Let me begin by saying that right off the bat (ha), I suspected this film would have serious directorial issues. Elsewhere, I expressed my concerns and reviewed the trailer when it first dropped, explaining what I thought the troubles would be. This film was directed by André Øvredal, whose most notable work that I can think of is: “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” released in 2019. He also directed Troll Hunter, which I have not seen, but it is likely his second most well-known work. Having only seen “Scary Stories” I am going to make comparisons between the two. At the time of release, I recall “Scary Stories” being described as “horror training wheels for kids” by Chris Stuckman or one of those other well-known YouTube reviewers. I feel that is a fair assessment. I was not frightened for the entirety of the runtime except for one scene at the hospital where the survivor girl and her love interest are listening to a recording of the main antagonist being tortured by electric shock therapy while her friend is off trying not to (not) die (this is a film for kids, so no one actually dies). In the middle of the recording, the voice of the antagonist suddenly addresses the main character and her love interest in real time. That was the only legitimately creepy scene that I can recall. Now, since this was horror for kids, I wasn’t going to be too hard on it. However, when I saw the trailer for Demeter, I had a certain feeling that this director had learned the wrong lessons from Scary Stories. The trailer fully revealed the Man-Bat creature, and the indication to me was this film would try to work based on “spectacle.” Scary Stories tried working in that way, though it was more forgivable because even though the various monsters were on screen for extended periods, there were numerous different ones, and so in total none was on screen for more than perhaps a minute or two except the Jangly Man. “Familiarity breeds contempt” as the saying goes, or else “the Law of Diminishing Returns” must always be kept in mind if a specific emotion is desired. Showing the audience the creature is almost always a bad idea, for reasons I have already expanded on in my past criticisms. Getting back to this director, I feared from watching the trailer that he thought one could legitimately milk terror out of a movie monster by heaving it on screen constantly, and knew this would never work.

As it turns out, I was totally right. The Man-Bat is on screen quite a lot. To make things even MORE egregious, the Man-Bat/Nosferatu begins the film as the unimaginably pathetic love-child of Gollum and an old man with Parkinson’s, complete with wheezy,-gaspy-old-man voice. Our first view of this pathetic creature is it barely being able to crawl out of its coffin-crate and shuddering in a fetal position under a bulkhead somewhere.

Remember how I mentioned Clemens had a “meh” character introduction? Well, so-called "Dracula" looks like a shaved Crypt Keeper with uncontrollable tremors who can’t even stand up under his own power.

I want you, dear reader, to really wrap your head around the decision to make a Dracula movie where your first sight of "Dracula" is as a naked, withered Count Orlock rat-man shivering in a corner while practically hugging himself and gasping. That is your visual.

You might be thinking, as I did, that MAYBE the film would do a good job of establishing “well, this is Dracula at his WEAKEST, he’s going to get so gnarly and cool and scary as the movie continues.”

…..my sweet summer child.

He just turns into the Man-Bat. Even at the end of the film [spoilers ahead] where he is in London, he is STILL a CGI monstrosity Orlock-rat-man, but in a top hat and with a cane. I almost laughed out loud. That is an incredibly baffling decision I will have to break down.

The Man-Bat’s design is also very reminiscent of the Jangly Man from Scary Stories. Different directors have different looks they like for monsters. My boy Del Toro likes a certain aesthetic. Luc Besson likes his droopy-eared monsters. And it appears that Øvredal likes his old man-esque monsters and asymmetrical faces.

I can’t show you the image, but in the Last Voyage, Olgaren (Stefan Kapicic) smashes his head through a door, and the reveal of the damage to his face is very similar to the asymmetry of the Jangly Man in Scary Stories. One eye is white, and swollen so large it almost droops from that side of his face, for example.

This is not a criticism per se. A director having an aesthetic or even a stable of actors (he worked with both Dastmalchian and Javiar Botet (Nosferatu/Man-Bat) before on Scary Stories. It is only a problem if or when that aesthetic doesn’t jive with the current project. It’s a good part of the reason why the Spielberg-looking aliens in Indiana Jones 4 were so awful. So while it works to have "Dracula" be a tall man, and even a tall OLD man, it does NOT work to have Dracula be a withered husk of a rat-man shivering like a frightened chihuahua, ESPECIALLY if all you’re going to do to make him scarier later is give him wings and more teeth. And especially not if you’re going to have the audience spend quite a bit of time STARING DIRECTLY AT HIM.

Character introductions in movies are CRITICAL. Here is a good video on one way to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldizPDmm9eI and another which shows wonderful examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5psXjzWUve8. This film fails to introduce its main character, Clemens, in a way that tells us much about him, and certainly fails at introducing "Dracula" for reasons already stated. Clemens is shot from behind in an attempt to create an air of mystery, which is…fine. However, it is soon revealed that he’s staring out at a street and ignoring the card game he was currently engaged with. One might take away from this that he’s a man who isn’t invested in money, and is just wasting time, or else that he’s a naive philosopher and globe trotter out for adventure with a head in the clouds. This second take is closer to what the film presents, but as with the thematic argument introduced, this character is not very well-developed. Clemens is presented as an educated man adrift in a foreign country (in this case Bulgaria, and I’ll nitpick that later), with no prospects, but who does—for reasons that are LUDICROUSLY unclear once he explains his backstory—desperately want to return to England. He somehow manages to overhear a man whispering into the ear of one of the players at the table something like nine feet behind him in a bar that the Demeter is hiring a crew, at which point he grabs his few bags and folds, then runs off to get the job. If he was looking for money for passage, his disinterest in the card game does not support that. If he was simply looking to get hired for a boat, why was he risking throwing away all his money on a card game he clearly has no interest in? What sort of person TURNS THEIR BACK on an active game, especially when, as revealed later in the movie, he is confused and hurt about his experiences with racism? One might think he’d be concerned that he’d be cheated, since he’s not only not facing the game; he’s not even holding his cards. They’re lying face down on the table some five feet behind him. Given that the film later reveals that his quest for “answers to the world” is NOT philosophical in nature, but wholly and completely material, then this man is not a whimsical dreamer lost in some imaginings, either.

This also ties into the final part of the thematic argument for Clemens at the end of the film when he reduces Nosferatu rat-bat to an “animal” because he sleeps and eats, just like all other creatures (also film, what a way to describe Dracula. Just. WOW). Clemens remain underdeveloped for the entire film, which is a shame, as he has no clear character flaws, and a very ill-defined motivation. Agency is something I’m going to talk about later, but Clemens only has a half-way agency in the film. He is rejected for the job on the Demeter, and though he earns a position by rescuing Captain Elliot’s grandson from an accident, the fact is he was doing nothing more to earn the position but sitting and waiting for an opportunity to present itself. By happy coincidence, the Captain’s grandson decided to run directly under a three-ton box and just squat down to play in the dirt and shadow of this thing, and by unhappy coincidence, this is the exact box that was doomed to fall from the rigging and crush anyone or anything underneath. So, on the one hand, good job Clemens for “petting the dog” but on the other hand, the situation is contrived simply as an excuse to let Clemens on board after being rejected (I will have more to say about Toby, the Captain’s grandson, later).

To return to flaws, Clemens has no real character flaws to speak of, as opposed to the far more well-defined Wojchek, who is loyal, stubborn, suspicious, brash, and honest. Clemens is certainly a serviceable character, but a very flat one, who has no arc at all. The changes that happen to him over the course of the film: going from wanting concrete, worldly answers to injustice in the world (also: WHAT?), to single-mindedly wanting to hunt down Dracula is not an arc that follows organically. What does wanting to kill Dracula have to do with his initial ponderings? It appears to be partly a revenge motive, but….so what? Clemens never sought revenge for the injustice he has suffered so far, so this is an orthogonal motivation, if indeed it’s even revenge. It feels rather more like “well, he’s a hero, so he’s going to hunt Dracula now.” It is a similar sort of ill-defined character as Rey from the Disney Star Wars franchise, though he is not over-powered in the way she is, and not instantly liked (or even hated) by everyone in the way that a Mary Sue would be, either. There isn’t much to praise, but there also isn’t much to criticize. He’s rather a milk-toast, undercooked “meh” of a character that isn’t a BAD character per se, just not a very interesting one. All the interesting things about him are external, rather than internal.

The worst character, however, is actually NOT Nosferatu-Man-Bat, believe it or not, though I’m getting to him. No, the absolute WORST character in the entire film par excellence is the gypsy woman, Anna (Aisling Franciosi). I say gypsy even though the film uses the word “romani” for two reasons: the first, that was not a term used in the 1890s to my knowledge, and secondly, because ask a Romanian how they feel about calling gypsies a word that sounds like they’re inherently Romanian or from Romania and see what sort of reaction you get.

Ok, Anna…...Anna, Anna, Anna….

As a nitpick, I will say that I have never seen a love interest/leading lady shot so poorly in my entire life. She’s lit worse than Halle Bailey in the Little Mermaid flop. Holy cow.

There is not a single shot of her that looks good. The most common angle Øvredal uses is to place the camera almost directly into her forehead, and then almost fish-eye lens her from there. It is a baffling decision, and not flattering to her at all.
​
Is that a nit pick? Kind of, but it was so egregious it called attention to itself. In any case, the “character,” so-called. We all knew that in 2023, only Christopher Nolan can get away with making a film with only white men in it, and that the script would have to find a way to get a woman on board. I don’t actually mind that in principle, so long as the female character is well-developed and, you know, services the script in some way. I would absolutely have done something similar if I had been handed this project.

However, there is no polite way to put this: Anna is not a character. She is almost literally an exposition-fairy-deus-ex-machina. Everything about her is contrived. The crew discover her, because as it happens, Parkinsons-Skeletor-Dracula demanded sacrifices before they loaded him up onto the Demeter, and her village gave her over to him. He had her buried in a crate full of dirt for potentially days and was feeding off her the entire time. Happily, she was not only in a crate that WASN’T under the 24-50 other three-ton crates, but was ALSO in a crate that was poorly stowed and fell and popped open on day two or three of the voyage, while she was still alive, and hadn’t turned into a vampire minion yet. WHAT A SERENDIPITOUS EVENT. Because throughout the movie it is revealed that "Dracula" can mess with people’s minds (more on that in the "Dracula" section), I had thought that this might be an intentional part of Dracula’s plan for the ship, and that she was actually being controlled and so would be able to run interference for Dracula if the crew got too close. Considering how Anna doles out information to the crew, this theory would have fit. Alas, this was not the case. Anna is discovered unconscious and dying and provides Clemens another “pet the dog” moment, while providing the first human victim of Man-Bat a chance to “kick the dog” (he wants her chucked overboard, despite the fact that she’s clearly ill and probably dying). While she is feverish and unconscious and receiving daily(?) blood transfusions from Clemens (more on that in nitpicks), Toby reveals that she “doesn’t speak much English.” I knew from the trailers that Anna knew about "Dracula," and was wondering how the film was going to prevent her from just spilling all the beans the moment she was awake.

As it turns out, like any good exposition fairy, she speaks perfect English, but only gives out information as the plot demands. Her first lines of dialogue is a minutes-long story about her village and "Dracula" and how she was given to him (though not how she ended up in the crate or anything else) which is delivered in perfect English to Clemens. At no point does Anna wonder where she is, or even SUGGEST that the crew go looking for Dracula, whom she confirms is ABSOLUTELY ON THE SHIP THIS VERY MOMENT. She mopes around and says “there’s evil on board” but the moment the camera is not on her, she goes into stasis only to pop out again ready to reveal more exposition if the scene requires it. And her exposition is WORTHLESS. In the entire minutes-long story about her village and "Dracula," she actually reveals NO useful information, has no questions, doesn’t have any explanation for why an ignorant, peasant-gypsy from Romania (NITPICK ON THAT LATER) knows PERFECT ENGLISH, nor asks why she’s on a boat, neither speculates about what to do, neither suggests ANY ACTION AT ALL.

We then don’t see her for at least a day or two of movie time, and she’s just…ready to do some action. There is a painfully hilarious scene where Toby is locked in the captain’s quarters and the nearest upper quadrant of the door is busted open. Clemens attempts to reach in with his left arm twisting backwards to unlock the latch, and to his credit, Corey Hawkins does his absolute best selling the audience on the fact that he “totally can’t reach the lock” when it is painfully obvious that he can. While he and the other men struggle to get the door open, Anna just warps into the scene with a gun and shoots the lock off. This is the first instance of her stealing agency from other characters, but it is not the ONLY one. Later, [mega spoilers] when the few remaining crew are trying to conduct a funeral for Toby, his grandfather, the captain, is unable to find the strength to say anything, so Anna steps forward and gives the most blah sermon imaginable ON HIS BEHALF. Later, in the final confrontation with Man-Bat, [spoilers] it is ANNA who manages to pin Man-Bat and save Celemens from being killed by the Bat-Crypt-Keeper, allowing them both to jump overboard. Just…wow. At the end, Anna reveals that [spoiler] she has been infected by Man-Bat all along, and everyone who is infected over the course of the film burns to death in sunlight. I suppose the blood transfusions are meant to explain why she hasn't until just after this scene, where she says that her village “chose for her to be food for [Dracula], but [she] chooses this [to burn to death on her own terms].” If she was the sort of person who was willing to “go out on her own terms,” why didn’t she try to kill "Dracula" on her own over the course of the many days/weeks over which the story goes? Why didn’t she hop overboard the moment she realized she was on a ship with "Dracula" and a crew that wasn’t going to bother trying to fight or even LOCATE the monster? Because the plot didn’t need her to. At the end, when there are LITERALLY only three crew members left alive, it finally occurs to Clemens to ask her how to kill the Man-Bat. She reveals she has no idea.

….Just….MARVELOUS scriptwriting there.

I could go on. I don’t want to bother. There’s not enough of a character there to even get annoyed at. She is literally a plot device.

Ok, now onto the "Dracula" section. I will try to be brief. Everyone is at least familiar in PASSING with Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. All anyone needs is a photo and they ought to know more or less what I’m talking about.

Cinema buffs may be aware that there were two Dracula movies made at this time. The other one was a Spanish production, which is largely praised for having better production value and/or direction. Here is a brief video on the other film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZDoon5n_Q4. Despite everything else about the film, I contend the real reason it was not as popular as the English one was this: its Dracula lacked the same on-screen magnetism. If you’re making a Dracula film, you had BETTER GET DRACULA RIGHT. I am not exaggerating when I say (a little resignedly) that Count Dracula is, for better or for worse, THE pop cultural icon of the last two centuries (https://universalmonsters.fandom.com/wiki/Dracula_in_popular_culture). No other fictional character comes close (Sherlock Holmes has appeared in more works, to my knowledge, but does not command the same emotional or pop-culture weight, so far as I can tell). I don’t want to get into a whole lecture about Count Dracula here, but I think it goes without saying that if you don’t have a good Dracula in your vampire work, and ESPECIALLY in your Dracula work, then nothing else about your work will...well, WORK. Or at the least, that your project has marks against it, which no creator needs. Hence, I think, the need to at least ADDRESS Dracula in virtually every vampire franchise made since the character appeared (in film, if not in writing). He is the villain to top all villains: the dark lord, the sadist, the lawful evil, the maniacal gremlin, the ravenous monster, the corrupter, the seducer, the rapist, the embodiment of all that is evil. You HAVE to get him right. To put it succinctly, this movie fails ABYSMALLY. It fails harder than any other film Dracula that I am aware of, and I include his pathetic cameo in Buffy season 5, and kid-friendly versions like the Hotel Transylvania franchise. The ABSOLUTE. BOTTOM. (I am not speaking as to whether it is good to acclimate children to this embodiment of evil as cute or sympathetic, only speaking as to a version of him as written and presented).

Holy cow. Where to begin?

I’ve talked at length about his appearance, but it is actually SO MUCH WORSE than just how he looks. Anna calls him a “demon in human skin” which is hilarious, since at no time, not even WHILE IN LONDON IN A TOP HAT does he ever look remotely human. I am not exaggerating when I say that Count Orlock, after whom this creature was clearly modeled, is better able to pass as a normal human than Man-Bat is at any point in this entire movie:

Click the link for an image from this hilarious article with a clip that I think you should take a look at if you want to get an idea about the upcoming problem with this “Dracula” https://www.ign.com/articles/last-voyage-of-the-demeter-horrific-dracula-interview.

This version of "Dracula" LOVES his lame, generic, “bad guy” lines. As you heard there, he croak-whispers “it begins...now” at the third man he is going to hunt. ….Just….what are you talking about, Count Gollum? What begins? This is the third man you’re going to kill. What is this line supposed to mean in the context of anything else? You’ve already been killing, and we haven’t reached the point in the script where you plan to kill indiscriminately and without reserve, that happens many days in the future. Who is this man to you? Why say this??? UUUUUUGHHHHH.

In the finale, when Clemens calls "Dracula" out (please, just...let my torment end) by calling him more or less a base animal, and Nosferatu is about to suck his blood, Clemens spits out “I’m not scared of you” and Man-Bat says--I am not kidding--“You will be.”

As far as characterization goes, this “Dracula” is a total mess. On the one hand, we have to contend with the film’s botched thematic argument about crushing materialism opposed to allowing even the slightest room for the supernatural or supranatural. Anna describes Nosferatu as “evil” with enough emphasis that we are probably meant to take that as “evil” with a capital “E,” which would be fine for Dracula, except that Clemens calling him out as an animal seems to be the correct choice at the end of the film. Moreover, this “Dracula” more or less behaves like an animal. I can’t begin to fathom why the village Anna comes from was frightened of a gasping, parapalegic rat-bat-man who could only kill you if you literally walk right up to him (as seen by the first human kill in the movie, Petrovsky), when they could have presumably just ignored him or even moved, if they really felt it was necessary. But more than that, this “Dracula” seems to get a kick out of making his bloody rampages insanely obvious, and even getting spotted killing people. He makes what might generously be described as “the barest minimum attempt” to hide himself. He leaves evidence of his presence EVERYWHERE and the ONLY reason he doesn’t get found sooner is that the crew makes the baffling decision of simply NOT LOOKING FOR THE THING THAT VIOLENTLY ATE ALL THEIR ANIMALS AFTER OPENING THEIR CAGES AND RIPPING THE SHIP’S DOG IN HALF AND THEN DRAGGING THE BODY TO THE KITCHEN SO THEY COULD STUMBLE ACROSS IT, as well as “hey, did Petrovsky shave himself drunkenly last night, slit his own throat all over the deck, then fall off the side?” If any of the crew had actually really bothered to look for what must be an obvious existential threat on board sooner, they could probably have found ol’ Man-Bat’s super special locked box-coffin easily. Once Clemens decides to check the boxes….when there are three crew members left (of which he is one), he finds ol’ Man-Bat’s box (which Anna effortlessly figures out how to unlock on the first try) in what might be under ten minutes in-movie time. This is made all the worse when it becomes clear that Nosferatu here has Count Orlock’s weakness to sunlight (Dracula, remember, does NOT get killed by sunlight), so one would assume if he had two brain cells to rub together, he might want to be careful NOT to advertise his presence left and right on a small boat where there’s really a finite number of places for a seven-foot tall rat-bat-man to be hiding when he seems to be completely insensate during the day. All the crew theoretically has to do is just locate the specific box, then during the day winch it up out of the hold and then nail it shut and whoopsy-daisy it right over the side into the ocean if they’re not sure they can kill him.

This monster, bafflingly, is an exhibitionist who likes to make faces at the camera and other characters. He barely speaks, and when he does, he throws out the most cliched one-note villain lines imaginable, and often in a hoarse gollum-old-man voice. It is one of the most pathetic things I have ever witnessed. He is written like a creature monster, not like a ghost, a demon, or highly intelligent monster. He’s like the monster form of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s performances. She’s always performing “for the camera.” So is this weirdo. Honestly, if this monster wasn’t called “Dracula” and was just some...generic, low-level vampire barely capable of sentient thought, he would be fine, though the movie would still be terrible. As-is, we have to put up with a lobotomized Dracula-Orlock transporter accident who acts like a clown the entire film. I might characterize him as a “talking crocodile with a flair for showing off.” What a sad, sad characterization.

There is a sad attempt to say that he can “get into the minds” of other characters, as when he [spoiler] whispers to the Captain that if the Demeter successfully lands at England, then he can bring the captain’s grandson, Toby, back to life. As it turns out, this is a plot cul-de-sac because all it takes is Anna telling him “the devil talks to me, too, he twists everything you want. That’s what the devil does” before the captain goes “okie-dokie, right you are” and off they all go like nothing happened. If you cut that scene from the film, it would be better, because then I could try to pretend the crew acting like morons makes sense because “Dracula” was messing with their heads. Also, glad to see that Anna can also shrug off the great evil that’s been preying on her for days such that she can self-immolate randomly at the end of the film.

Ok, this is getting long. I’ll just list some other plot problems and nitpicks before calling this quits. I don’t want to talk about this garbage much more.

The plot can only happen due to rampant and inexplicable stupidity and characters acting against their own best interests and motivations. As stated earlier, about….oh, three or so days into the journey, Man-Bat carefully unlocks all the animal cages and rips them to pieces, then leaves all their mangled corpses in the hold, then grabs the ship’s dog, rips off its face and tears it in half, then carries the dog over to the kitchen to deposit there to be found. After being confronted with this carnage, the crew more or less agree that “the dog was rabid” and despite bringing up that the dog could not 1) have carefully opened the cage doors, and 2) could not have ripped itself in half and walked its corpse to a new location, they just press on and make no attempt to solve this mystery. Then, when a crewman goes missing overnight but there is a suspicious amount of BLOOD ALL OVER the deck, as well as part of the cargo hold being punched clean up and open, large enough for a large animal or a man of some sort to slip through, they just keep going “well, this sure is a mystery. Odd, odd, odd.” The reason the movie attempts (I think) to give for this disinterest in making port is because they get a bonus if they reach England early. Which is...fine, but it doesn’t explain why the crew doesn’t think to search the ship until they find the BODY of another crew member, as well as another who has been badly mauled. Moreover, let’s take this moment to return to Toby, the captain’s grandson. Like Anna, he is a plot device, meant to serve as a woobie, as well as allowing an excuse for Clemens to come on board. Captain Elliot (in one of the few of Liam Cunningham’s actual scenes) states that this will be “his last voyage. He’s going to retire to the country to take care of his grandson” almost word for word. Go ahead and laugh, I almost did. His grandson is the ONLY living member of his family left. One MIGHT assume that if that was the case, and there was an obviously dangerous...I don’t know, vicious animal? Maniacal stowaway? on board, if you were Captain Elliot, you’d make port immediately because the bonus won’t do you your grandson any good if he gets SLAUGHTERED, no matter WHAT the crew says about it. This returns us to the “haunted house” question from earlier. No matter what, this ship can’t POSSIBLY be that far from any shore. It is traveling from Bulgaria to England. It will be hugging the coast throughout the Mediterranean, and then Portugal. There might be a brief time after passing Spain when they will be somewhat more distant, but I contend there’s no real reason they CAN’T make port. This isn’t space. The distance is miles, not LIGHT YEARS. Especially when faced with some sort of creature or murderer on board who is literally cutting its way through every living thing on the ship. Considering the boat washes ashore in Whitby, when Dracula wants to be in London, but the crew is still LARGELY STILL ALIVE AND STEERING when they are less than a day away from their destination, that means they passed up numerous opportunities to make port and try to get to the bottom of what was killing them. Here is where Whitby is, for those wondering:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Whitby,+UK/@53.9246125,-1.8290978,6z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x487f1779f21902d7:0xa0fd139f12932a0!8m2!3d54.486335!4d-0.613347!16zL20vMDE2bjd2?entry=ttu. As you can see, to hit Whitby, the crew must have overshot London by quite some distance. While the ship also washes up in Whitby in the book, it has been unmanned for quite some time, and probably being steered in by Dracula via the weather, so I am willing to accept a certain amount of impreciseness with its landing. Also, I believe Stoker was referencing a real shipwreck, but I would need to double-check.

Characters act counter to logic and sense throughout the film. I don’t have the energy to break it all down.

To return a bit to the thematic argument, but also to cover how “Dracula” doesn’t work in this movie, there was another very odd decision in this film. There is precisely one crucifix on board a ship full of people who at least appear to be Christian. Joseph, the Chinese Christian cook, who I assume is meant to be Orthodox (he references St Nicholas, but he could be Catholic as well) does not have a crucifix; he wears a single cross (he was also one of the more interesting characters at the beginning of the film, though he is treated VERY badly later on). There is the thematic argument about total materialism (which also fits with the philosophical mindset of the nineteenth century) opposed to the mysticism or even “superstition” of the previous centuries. As stated before, Stoker’s work directly reflects this conflict. However, any time a character holds this single crucifix in the presence of Orlock-Man-Bat, he kills them immediately. The film even has lingering shots on the crucifix dangling from fingers going limp as Man-Bat drains his victims. Later, Joseph, the most outwardly vocal Christian, is so frightened of the monster that he rambles incoherently to himself about Jonah, steals a lifeboat and rows out to sea by himself to escape, with his Bible sitting on the seat in front of him. Man-Bat kills him and sprays his blood across the Bible, then sends the bloodied lifeboat back to the Demeter (I don’t know, this monster makes no sense, and I don’t have the energy to talk about how Dracula ought not to be able to fly out over the sea to get this crew member, and why that breaks the book and also negates the need for this voyage as-is but I just...don’t have the energy. There is so much wrong with this film).

So the film makes a very clear and aggressive message that faith, and by extension, God or goodness, do not exist. This certainly fits with the materialist-oriented argument winning. But vampires are NOT frightening monsters in the material world. I cannot remember which fictional work more or less called vampires “4F rejects” because they have so many weaknesses. The fact is, they do, BUT their threat is not material, it is wholly supernatural. They are demonic, uncanny, and embodiments of evil, not just flying bat people who like to suck blood. Once you remove the supernatural element, then you’re just dealing with a particularly vulnerable human-animal with a weird diet. As far as this film, you cannot have Dracula be “the devil” while also refuting the existence of, or the power of, God. I could do a whole podcast about this ridiculous Hollywood trope (which was the cause for my hard eye-rolling when I saw that there was a sequel to “the Nun” in the trailers as well as another Exorcist movie coming out). Good vampire movies treat the vampire LIKE a demon. You could plug a number of the beats for Dracula into the Exorcist, for example. Van Helsing, the expert, is there to exorcise the demon, Dracula, who is slowly corrupting and taking over Mina. The Last Voyage of the Demeter is structured more like Jaws or Alien. It’s a creature feature, but that’s NOT what vampires are. If this "Dracula" was called a “mutant” or a “demihuman” or something, or literally replaced with an actual animal monster, like a deep-cave, man-sized vampire bat, the plot would hardly change at all. I mean, Anna would make no sense, but she already makes no sense and contributes nothing but deus-ex-machina rescues anyway, so all you’d lose is bad writing. Basically, if this so-called “Dracula” was just a large, particularly smart bat—say, as smart as a velociraptor in the Jurassic Park franchise—the only thing you’d lose would be Anna, and that’s no loss. I could go on, and I might, but not here.

Nitpicks:
Why make a reference to the captain lashing himself to the wheel a la the book, if you’re going to untie him and set him down on the deck after being killed by the Man-Bat? It would be like making a King Arthur movie where he draws the sword from the stone, then puts it back, and then forgets about it. Don’t do the reference if you’re going to undo the reference moments later. People who don’t recognize the reference don’t need it, and people who DO recognize it will be confused and annoyed.

Why have Clemens meet the crew in Bulgaria? Especially after he reveals that he went down to the Balkans because KING CAROL I OF ROMANIA TRIED TO HIRE HIM AS A PHYSICIAN. ROMANIA. (Ugh, getting to that). Considering that two other characters are from “Romania” (despite the fact that Dracula is supposed to be from Transylvania), we run into Clemens in BULGARIA. Why is he in Bulgaria floating around aimlessly hoping to hire himself onto a boat to get back to England? Why not be in Constanta? Which is. IN. ROMANIA. Why, if TWO OTHER CHARACTERS are going to be from Romania, NOT just have him be in Romania too? I know that the ship departed from Varna in the book, but since this movie doesn’t follow the book anyway, why not make your life easier with regards to characters? I mean, if you follow the captain’s log he makes no mention of a grandson or a female stowaway, so...just do what you want. Only Petrovsky is like the book (the first man to go missing in the novel, and in the movie, though in the movie he is the only Russian).

Why is this Russian vessel manned by only one Russian, and a bunch of people from all over the world? Like the Chinese Christian cook named Joseph?

Why does this movie not understand that Transylvania wasn’t part of Romania until just before the end of the first World War?

The blood transfusions thing is something I’m not quite sure what to make of. Blood transfusions certainly made an appearance in the novel, Dracula, but when Stoker included them, they were a controversial treatment. Clemens is a doctor who studied at Cambridge sometime before 1897, and has been on the road for some time. Nevertheless, he happens to have the tools he needs to perform a transfusion (several for Anna, and at least one for Toby) on hand. There is another possibility that this inclusion is a nod to Charles Drew, the black doctor who invented blood banks, and potentially even a reference to the common myth that he died because he was refused a blood transfusion himself for being black. I can’t say for certain that this was intended, but I thought it a curious possibility (here is more info if you’re interested: https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/question/2004/june.htm)

Overall, a waste of time, and a waste of a great idea for a horror film.