Starring: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, and David Dastmalchian

Director:  André Øvredal

Lionsgate

A crew sailing from Carpathia to England find that they are carrying very dangerous cargo.

André Ovredal (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Troll Hunter) has fashioned an old-fashioned horror movie based on a chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and while a little judicious editing wouldn’t have gone amiss, it’s largely a successful exercise.

It’s July 1897 and a ship washes up during at Whitby in a storm. This Russian vessel, the Demeter, has travelled from the Black Sea port of Varna, but the local police find no one alive, with just the captain’s logbook and a cargo of 50 crates destined for Carfax Abbey.

Stoker’s chapter is fairly short and thinly-populated, so we get new characters like Corey Hawkins (Kong: Skull Island) as our lead, Doctor Clemens, and Aisling Franciosi as stowaway Anna, who has been packed as a snack for the hidden vampire. The ship’s crew includes Liam Cunningham as world-weary Captain Eliot, who is in charge of his grandson, and no-nonsense David Dastmalchian as ruthless second-in-command Wojchek

Once out at sea, it’s not long before the livestock is slaughtered, and then a dog and members of the crew. The vampire is not kept in the shadows too long, a largely physical presence played by Javier Botet, looking like a cross between Nosferatu’s Count Orlok, DC’s Man-Bat, Gollum and comic book character Doomlord.

The violence of the character is not shied away from as the creature munches his way through the crew, turning some into the undead, who spectacularly combust in sunlight. There’s always that nagging sense of ‘but we know the creature will survive’ that undermines tension around plans to catch him, but it’s well-made, exciting and occasionally creepy.

Verdict: A welcome variation on a classic horror take that’s only let down by its run time. 8/10

Nick Joy