MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

When the Irish author Bram Stoker was writing his classic horror novel Dracula in 1897 he included a passage noting that a ship, the Demeter, ran aground in Whitby in North Yorkshire; all the crew on board were dead, and the only cargo were boxes of earth from a castle in Transylvania. This is, of course, the back story of how the evil vampire count came to be in England in the first place, and the fate of the Demeter is well known to those knowledgeable about Dracula lore – but there has never been a film about the Demeter before, and what terrible events transpired on the ship… until now. The film is essentially an extrapolation on the ’Captains Log’ chapter of Stoker’s original novel, and has been described by some critics as ‘Alien on a boat,’ as one by one the crew are picked off by the monster on board. The film stars Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, and David Dastmalchian, and is directed by Norwegian filmmaker André Øvredal.

The screenplay for The Last Voyage of the Demeter had actually been kicking around Hollywood for more than a decade. The idea was originally conceived by screenwriter Bragi Schut Jr. as early as 2002, with him having been inspired to write it by a friend who worked as a special effects technician on Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula film in 1992. The project subsequently went through at least a half dozen different directors over the course of the subsequent twenty years – Robert Schwentke, Marcus Nispel, Stefan Ruzowitzky, David Slade, Neil Marshall, among others – and had actors ranging from Ben Kingsley to Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, and Viggo Mortensen attached at various points in time, before eventually landing on Øvredal’s desk. It has been mostly well-received by horror aficionados, but unfortunately has failed to strike a chord with mainstream audiences over its opening weekend.

Director Øvredal’s last film, Mortal from 2020, featured an outstanding score by young Norwegian composer Marcus Paus, and when I first heard about this project I hoped that it would serve as Paus’s introduction to US audiences. However, in April 2022, Thomas Newman was announced as the film’s composer. Although some of his scores have included brief horror moments, The Last Voyage of the Demeter would have been Newman’s first true horror score since The Lost Boys in 1987, and I was actually quite intrigued by the prospect, but just a couple of months before the film opened it was announced that Newman had departed the project due to ‘scheduling conflicts’ and that Bear McCreary had come in to replace him. It’s not clear just how much music Newman wrote before he left, and just one cue – an arrangement of the traditional sea shanty ‘Hanging Johnny’ for a hardanger fiddle – is attributed to him in the film’s end credits. Whatever the case may be, McCreary is nothing if not a safe pair of hands in these circumstances, and his resultant work is excellent, irrespective of how late in the game he was brought on board.

In the score’s publicity material McCreary writes: “I dove into scoring The Last Voyage of the Demeter as if it were a rite of passage! Writing a theme for a cinematic depiction of Bram Stoker’s iconic Dracula is a dream come true for any film composer. I was inspired by the eerie, ominous atmosphere that visionary director André Øvredal managed to craft with this film. Hoping to take the audience back to the eighteenth century with symphonic orchestra, choir, and rustic folk fiddles, I also strove to tell a modern tale of horror with distorted French horns, screeching hurdy gurdy harmonics, and hideous atonal colors. Just as Dracula is a foreign beast to the sailors of the Demeter, these modern cinematic sounds slither ominously throughout the traditional symphonic colors to create a sound that I hope is equally inviting and terrifying.”

Interestingly, considering the film is a spiritual if not literal prequel to Coppola’s 1992 Dracula film, there is little to no reference to the sound Wojciech Kilar brought to that score. Instead, the score feels like a darker, more gothic version of his score for the pirate TV show Black Sails, crossed with the bombastic orchestral horror textures of things like 10 Cloverfield Lane and the Happy Death Day movies. The score is anchored by a bold, rampaging main theme, which is first introduced in the title cue “The Last Voyage of the Demeter”. It’s an imposing piece written for layered strings backed by clanging metallic percussion and a choir, as well as what sounds like a distorted electric guitar texture that is unexpectedly effective. This theme is present throughout much of the score, anchoring a lot of the dramatic moments, and featuring prominently towards the end of “Meet My Crew,” in “The Captain’s Log,” and later in “Wings in the Fog,” but it’s also a little more insidious than it initially appears; the four-note rhythmic device at the center of the theme tends to crop up in different guises and in unexpected places, cleverly suggesting the looming presence of Dracula over the whole story, even when he is not on screen.

The second most prominent idea is an ethereal female vocal backed by a solo violin, which appears to be related to Aisling Franciosi’s character Anna, a mysterious stowaway on board the ship. Anna’s theme first appears towards the end of “The Captain’s Log,” when she is first discovered, and it is prominent from then until the end of the score. There is a gloomy beauty to the theme – she is a tragic figure with a haunted past, as well as a heartbreaking connection to the events on board the Demeter – and each time her music appears it gives the score a feeling of mournful anguish, coupled with a sense of resignation, which speaks to the inherent disaster of the situation. It is especially prominent in “Delusional Grief,” at the beginning of “In the Lantern’s Light,” and in “Sacrifices,” before helping the score reach its emotional climax in the lovely “Epilogue”.

Other musical moments worth noting include the period textures for fiddle, dulcimer, and hurdy-gurdy in “The Demeter Embarks,” which speak to the ‘seafaring’ nature of the story; the intimate, warmer writing for the same ensemble in “Meet My Crew,” which establish a sense of camaraderie and friendship between Corey Hawkins’s character Clemens, and Liam Cunningham’s character Elliot, the captain of the Demeter. I also really like the fluttering, inquisitive string passages at the beginning of “The Captain’s Log,” which then take on a more ominous tone when backed by a choir.

The second half of the score ramps up the action and horror element significantly, adding a palpable sense of fear and dread to the multiple scenes of Dracula stalking and picking off the members of the Demeter’s crew. Cues like “Where the Devil Sleeps,” the second half of “In the Lantern’s Light,” a large part of “Sacrifices,” and the majority of “Wings in the Fog” adopt this style: insistent, relentless string rhythms backed by all manner of orchestral mayhem, as well as moments of shrill sonic distortion that is intentionally unpleasant and uncomfortable. I really like how McCreary passes the rhythmic core of the action around between different instruments to keep the tone interesting: first it’s cellos, then a dulcimer, then fiddles, all backed by the incessant low drone of the hurdy-gurdy.

Some may find some of this more dissonant music a little unpalatable; it’s certainly more ‘modern sounding’ than one might anticipate for a period horror film, and it embraces electronic textures and post-production manipulation to a greater degree than one might expect, but I found it to be done with great taste and skill, and it undeniably helps makes the shadowy figure of Dracula the stuff of nightmares.

One other thing I appreciate is the brevity of the album, which runs for just a touch over thirty minutes. In this era where the prevailing thinking when it comes to soundtrack albums is ‘release it all and let the listener sort it all out,’ I can’t help but laud the fact that McCreary and the Sparks & Shadows team have released this score as a more thoughtfully curated listening experience. A few people have expressed disappointment that the album isn’t longer, but I’m not one of them. Hit me with all the best bits, omit the repetitive filler, and get out of your own way.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a good score, one of the most accomplished horror efforts of the year to date, especially considering the apparently brief time that McCreary and his team had to turn this thing around. The main theme is bold and memorable, the orchestrations are interesting and filled with numerous identifiable McCreary-isms, the emotional parts are lovely, and the action music is appropriately intense and menacing. As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, I might have liked a slightly more obvious hat-tip to the legacy of Wojciech Kilar and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but that’s just the film music fan in me looking for geeky easter eggs, and in truth there is more than enough going on in The Last Voyage of the Demeter to recommend it on its own strengths.

Buy the Last Voyage of the Demeter soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• The Last Voyage of the Demeter (3:48)
• The Demeter Embarks (3:41)
• Meet My Crew (3:40)
• The Captain’s Log (3:50)
• Where the Devil Sleeps (2:29)
• Delusional Grief (3:31)
• In the Lantern’s Light (3:33)
• Sacrifices (3:17)
• Wings in the Fog (4:04)
• Epilogue (4:00)

Running Time: 35 minutes 59 seconds

Sony Classical (2023)

Music composed by Bear McCreary. Conducted by Bear McCreary. Orchestrations by Sean Barrett, Benjamin Hoff and Jamie Thierman. Additional music by Omer Ben-Zvi, Brian Claeys, Alexandre Cote, Bailey Gordon and Etienne Monsaingeon. Recorded and mixed by Casey Stone. Edited by Ben Schor. Album produced by Bear McCreary.