Set in the late 19th Century, ‘Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter’, is a spine-chilling tale of the doomed last voyage of the Demeter. Sailing from Transylvania to London, the crew is haunted by one of history’s most terrifying villains – Count Dracula.
Taking inspiration from ‘Alien’ (1979), Bragi Schut Jr., wrote the film – adapted from “The Captain’s Log”, a chapter from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. The film, produced by veteran producers Brad Fischer and Mike Medavoy, has had a 20 year journey from script to screen.
The film boasts an ensemble cast, starring Aisling Francisosi (The Nightingale), Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton), Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones), David Dastmalchian (Prisoners) & legendary creature performer Javier Botet (Slender Man) who portrays Dracula. The film features beautiful locations in Malta, as well as being shot in highly technical sets to achieve the isolating environment of the middle of the ocean.
To celebrate viewers finally being able to enjoy the film, we sat down with Director André Øvredal, to talk about the process of journey this thrilling film. Check out our conversation below!
SR: This film ended production in 2021 and then you did post in throughout 2022. So it’s been a while I’m guessing?
André: Yeah, it was hard to find a release date for it. Universal initially placed us in January, but nobody really wanted that date. So we all agreed that we were going to find a better date for the movie. So they suggested August 11th and you know, we were all happy to be part of the summer release schedule.
SR: Ah, fair enough. I saw the film & I really liked it! It was gripping and really well-made. So I’ll get to my first question – Having a filmmaking career consisting mostly of horror films, starting with ‘Trollhunter’ and now the ‘Voyage of the Demeter’, what do you think are the elements that make a good horror film?
André: It feels like it needs to have an ambition to say something and to be different. I believe that the horror movies I’ve been able to direct have been different from other movies. I mean, you’ve never seen a movie like this before; where we’re at sea, in 1897, a horror movie and a Dracula movie, I think that’s a very unique setting for this genre. I think also just for me, it’s about suspense. It’s about building a Hitchcockian suspense, which must have some kind of a horrific release. It has to have something it’s leading to, but also, you need great characters [because] you’re walking through this journey with them.
“…you’ve never seen a movie like this before; where we’re at sea, in 1897, a horror movie and a Dracula movie, I think that’s a very unique setting for this genre…”
So those are some basic elements. But I also enjoy the filmmaking part of creating a horror scene. I mean, I love the idea. I love the the precession that is demanded of my craft as a director because it’s all about precision. And you can’t just wing a horror movie. You need to create dread, suspense, the camera is hugely important, obviously sound is crucial. To me, all the arts of cinema are in full effect in a good horror movie.
SR: Yeah I agree, because you take away the horror elements of a good horror film, then you’re left with a good mystery film? And the Hitchcockian suspense and the drama of it all, I think definitely I saw it in the Voyage of the Demeter.
But also, throughout the years of Dracula, you’ve seen a suave gentleman-like sort of portrayal of him. Even say Hotel Transylvania, where he’s a comical children’s character.
SR: With your Dracula, you’ve made him into, a monster that you can’t reason with or tame. What was the creative inspiration behind that? Was that in the script or was that something that came to the table when you jumped on as director.
André: No, that was definitely in the script already. He was always a monster in the script and very feral in some ways. And I really embraced that. I love being able to portray Dracula from a new point of view, one which is not seen. And as you say, he’s oftentimes suave. He can even be funny, you know. But the horrific, really terrifying version of Dracula we – haven’t really seen.
I think one of the scarier ones is actually Nosferatu from 1922. It’s a silent film. It never really was suave. And Max Schreck looks very different and he played the character very differently. So that’s definitely an inspiration for us as well. [But] I’m very happy that it took be able to portray Dracula in a different way.
SR: So speaking of Dracula & Javier Botet‘s great performance as [Mo-Cap] Dracula leads me into the next question – What do you enjoy more – working with CGI or working with practical effects? And how do you balance that?
André: I mean, both are have their own advantages and fun parts too on set. Obviously it’s great to have the actor. It’s great to have the costume or the applications or, you know, the latex thing. It’s wonderful for the actors. It’s wonderful for me, for the lighting crew, for the DOP, for the production designer and everyone, to see.
And also you get the real performance that is based in human anatomy, because even when you’re replacing something or adding something or augmenting something in post, you’re still able to reference and be very, very close to what was shot on set. Even if it’s something that is being a facial expression that is a replaced or something.
VFX of course, has an endless opportunities, but you know, you have to rein it in a little bit because if it’s let loose completely, you start to feel the CGI way too much very, very quickly. So I find it to be more interesting also when I’m watching movies where, you can’t really tell the CGI, you know.
SR: So what was the vision for making Dracula? [You said] he’s described as a monster, but did you reference previous films or books?
André: We worked initially with Mike Hill on the first iterations of Dracula and he had a grasp on it immediately. He’s one of Guillermo del Toro‘s regular collaborators, and we also worked with him on Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Yeah, and then at a certain point we got a year on to doing some more other design elements.
And so between the two of them, we kind of found our Dracula between the work they both did.
But it was always Brad Fischer, he’s a visionary producer on this movie. He’s obsessed with the details as much as I am. So he and I would, send back and forth endlessly, images of bats and see the anatomy and how wings work, how they sit transparent.
So we wanted to reference it in physical, real stuff more than other movies. I always try to avoid as best as I can, but it is impossible to not reference other movies, but I always try not to. I try to make it into like our own thing. [For example] we research real ships. We don’t look at ships in other movies. And we constantly try to build that from the ground up with reality in mind. Not with filmmaking in mind.
SR: Are there any sort of funny stories or anything on set that happened that you’d like to share with us? Something supernatural or spooky that happened on set that sort of got you into the mood of making the film?
André: I mean when you’re making a movie, regardless if it’s a comedy or a horror movie or something; you’re obsessed with getting the shots. You’re obsessed with getting the movie, getting it right and fighting for the shots and fighting for the movie. So you’re not even paying attention to what’s going on around you.
So yeah. You caught me a bit empty handed there! I mean I’m sure there are some stories… SR:
Anything that you think is a notable experience, like a moment in one of the shooting days that you thought “this is it, this is what the film is about”?
André: I mean, you start to think you’re standing amid pandemic, everybody’s wearing masks, you have safety divers all around the ship and you’re in a very, very controlled environment in many ways.
And then you realize that in a way, the movie is kind of a symbol for what we’re going through in [real life], you know, with basically this disease spreading on the ship, the Dracula, the vampireism, essentially. There was some thinking like that when we were shooting; that, we are definitely in our own little boat, in our own little bubble
SR: You’ve directed great films in Norway. But, in the past half decade or so, you’ve been moving into American films. What have been the main contrasts of that experience, i.e being a Norwegian film director and then directing a film for an American studio?
André: There’s more money involved, so you have more resources, you have collaborators that are even more experienced. You have basically the best in the world, surrounded with the best people in the world. From the DOP – to the costume designer, to the production, of course, Amblin and my producers Mike Medavoy and Brad Fisher.
That’s an advantage. You have so much experience around you to help you make the movie and great writers [like] Bragi Schut and Zach Olkewicz. Specifically Zach who I was working with a lot, a fantastic writer. He also wrote Bullet Train, a great fun movie. So you’re always in great hands. SR:
In my film experience, I’ve learned that limitations always are a great breeding ground for creativity. So does working in an environment which has so much support for you, take away or give you more in the creative process?
André: Sometimes it’s great to have limitations. I would have to say the ‘Autopsy of Jane Doe’ was a movie with a lot of limitations and I think we did well with that. And also the same on Demeter, even though it’s a bigger budget movie, you do have a lot of limitations. [Because] you constantly have to fight.
And the most basic and most important limitation you always have is time, it’s literally the hours in the day. And in Malta, we would have 10 hours of shooting every day from when the sun went down to when the sun came up. That’s not a lot of time, and it’s such complex set with rain towers and with waves of water coming in on top of the ship and with stunts and with the sound and, you know, the noise of everything, wind machines, so many elements that all have to work together.
So even though those are amazing resources, they are also limitations because it also has to work together, at the same exact time. Every take you do, when you stop everything, everything has to all start all over again. And If one of them fails, you can’t shoot.
SR: Yeah, that’s very interesting. It’s like you always have limitations, no matter what. They always come to you in different ways. So mo’ money, mo’ problems?
André: Yeah! It adds up.
SR: One of my most burning questions was about having an American actor play a Slavic character. [David Dastmalchian]. Because there’s a big shift in the industry that you cast the actors from where they are. But in this film you’ve got an American actor playing a Slavic character, who is you doing an accent. Did you have limitations during casting? Were you interested in casting a Slavic actor, or was David [Dastmalchian] always the choice for you?
André: We did audition people, but I heard that David was interested in playing the part and he had a lot of experience at sea personally. That also weighed in heavily on [casting], to have an actor be able to really portray how it is to live on a ship in the ocean. It is a big part of the natural choice.
But he’s such a charismatic, fantastic actor that, it supersedes anything. And he really went full on with coaching and with Polish coaches constantly through the whole shoot to help finesse the accents, help work with the behaviour and the tonality of things. But, it has to still be, you know, reasonably easy to understand what he’s saying. So the accent doesn’t become too thick.
SR: So it’s bridging the actor’s relevant experience with the character’s, and filling in the blanks with their personality. That’s interesting. I never thought about it like that! One last question. This is probably off the books because it’s a spoiler question with one of my questions when I watched the film was – Why don’t [the crew] hatch a plan to get Dracula’s crate out, expose him to the sun and then burn him that way?
André: Because he keeps escaping them and he keeps hiding, basically. I’m going to admit that there is a scene where they do that. That was cut because of pacing for the movie. They actually go down into the into the cargo hold in daytime to do exactly that. They open up the crates to ignite him. He gets it though. He’s not that dumb. So we had to cut to just to keep the pace up. We were going down into the basement.
Reminiscent of the classic Nosferatu, Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter brings the audience to a late 19th century world of superstition, science & suspense. This ‘Knives Out’ meets ‘The Exorcist’ could easily be seen as a paranormal who dun-nit. That said, true to it’s inspiration of ‘Alien’, the shadow of a terrifying thought is cast over the whole experience. The thought being: In the middle of the ocean, no one can hear you scream.
Catch ‘Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter’’ only in cinemas from August 11
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