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Dracula hasn’t been bled dry just yet. Turns out that the highly monetized charactercan still inspire new (and more importantly, compelling) media. With at least 10 TV shows and more than 80 films (not including non-Dracula vampires) the Count may have been stretched a little thin. But The Last Voyage of the Demeter (watch trailer, runtime: 2:34) is a refreshing adaptation.

The two-hour film is based on a 16-page chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, following the crew of the Demeter, an ill-fated merchant ship haunted by the vampire during their voyage to London. While Stoker’s chapter is there to clarify how the Transylvanian Count ended up in the UK, the story of the crew was — until now and to our loss — largely glossed over.

Powerhouse ensemble cast: Captain Eliot (Game of Thrones’ Liam Cunningham) helms theship alongside first mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian, who you’ve seen in The Dark Knight, Dune, and The Suicide Squad) and his grandson Toby (child prodigy Woody Norman, who you might’ve seen in Cobweb).

They are joined last minute by Clemens (tour de force Corey Hawkins from The Tragedy of Macbeth, BlacKkKlansman, and Straight Outta Compton), recruited as the ship’s doctor to pay for his passage home to England. Coming in handy straight away when they stumble upon ailing stowaway Anna (Aisling Franciosi of The Fall), who warns them that Dracula is on board.

While some critics argue that the film isn’t scary enough to deserve the Dracula moniker, we disagree. The claustrophobic terror of being confined on a doomed ship in the middle of the sea with no land in sight is spine-chilling enough to keep us up at night.

WHERE TO WATCH- You can stream The Last Voyage of the Demeter on Apple TV+.

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