Making any movie is tough, challenging work for all involved, but André Øvredal’s The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is a special case. For starters, almost the entire film has the ensemble cast working in one relatively small location (aboard the titular ship), but there’s also a whole lot of rocking around and getting drenched in water. You can tell while watching the finished feature that it was not an easy production, and the cast confirmed as much when I had the chance to speak with them about their experience earlier this summer.
I spoke with the stars of The Last Voyage Of The Demeter back in June during the movie’s virtual press day (prior to the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike), and one question I asked all of them was about the rougher-than-normal conditions they were working in during the film’s production. Liam Cunningham, who plays the captain of the Demeter in the story, explained that the film in its own way benefitted from its lack of A-listers/big names, as the ensemble cast was made up of performers who are accustomed to the rougher aspects of the profession. Said Cunningham,
Well, the interesting thing with the cast on board, you have to remember there's no, what do they call them? Marquees names? No superstars on board here; the vehicle was Dracula. Dracula is the movie star in this. So, what you need to surround that is what we had in this movie was a joy. It was a bunch of actors, a lot of us, almost all of us, were theater people. We understand the hardships of working for very little money. We've been trained well on trying to bite the bullet. So we were aware of all this difficulty.
Continuing, the former Game Of Thrones star affirmed my suspicions that the water and close quarters made The Last Voyage Of The Demeter a challenging movie to make, but being surrounded by good people helped the experience:
You're dead right: for long periods of time, difficult location, water, all that sort of stuff. You really want to get on with the rest of the people. And when it's a proper ensemble working together and you get on with everybody, it makes the misery... reduces it significantly. And misery looks great on screen! So you go along with that .
Misery certainly is a big part of the game where this story is concerned. As alluded to by Liam Cunningham, The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is a partial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that digs into what transpires when the titular vampire takes a ship from his home in Transylvania to England. Along the way, he surreptitiously hunts the members of the crew for sustenance so that he can be at full strength by the time the Demeter arrives at its final destination.
Corey Hawkins plays Clemens, a doctor who joins the crew of the Demeter at the last minute, and he told me about a rare sensation that he experienced in the making of the film. Despite not actually taking a vessel out to sea, his time making the new feature left him with a touch of sea sickness. Said Hawkins,
I actually remember when we started in Berlin, we were doing a lot of the interiors and it didn't take long for us to get motion sickness on dry land. They built these sets, the interiors on gimbals and because you can't see the horizon and the ship is doing this constantly, but you're in the scene and you're acting, and then you walk out and I remember having to take Dramamine or whatever they gave us .
Following up, I specifically asked about working with water and the sequences where there are waves crashing and storms raging. Corey Hawkins admitted those days were rough, but he also found himself marveling and what was being accomplished by the dedicated team of filmmakers:
You dread it, but honestly, it's a pleasure. To be able to do it and then you look back; I remember standing on the dock and watching them do some tests of the rain and all of that kind of stuff, and I was just like, 'This is incredible.' At nighttime, you see the waves, they get the wave tanks going, and it's a full scale mock-up of the Demeter. So it's the boat with the sails and everything, and it's moving around and turning and doing all the things it does in the sea.
Corey Hawkins told me that he was able to get into the fantasy, though there were some unfortunate snap backs to reality. He added,
I had to pinch myself and I was like, 'Oh, wow, here we go. We're bringing Dracula back and we're putting them at sea' and it's just a thrilling opportunity as an actor to watch and to be a part of. And then, you know, they call cut and you just stand there drenched in the freezing cold . But, you know, it is what it is.
Playing first mate Wojchek in The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, the often cinematically ill-fated David Dastmalchian put it bluntly. The movie wasn’t easy to make and it hurt, but the effort and pain was worth it:
There were moments the misery was palpable. You could feel it. Our bodies were aching. It's worth every strained muscle.
Also starring Aisling Franciosi, Stefan Kapicic, and Woody Norman, The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is now playing in theaters everywhere.
