Forget CGI — the actor who plays Dracula in "The Last Voyage of Demeter" has another trick up his sleeve.
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00:00 Forget CGI, the actor who plays Dracula in The Last Voyage of the Demeter has another
00:06 trick up his sleeve.
00:08 In Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, the titular Count travels from his remote castle
00:13 in the Carpathian Mountains to a new home in England on a ship called the Demeter.
00:17 He travels with multiple coffins filled with earth and is sealed in a coffin of his own.
00:22 Weeks after departing, the Demeter drifts into Whitby Harbor.
00:25 No one is on board.
00:27 Instantly, readers can connect the dots.
00:30 Dracula, requiring human blood to survive, snuck out of his coffin at night to pick off
00:34 the Demeter's crew one by one.
00:36 The reader is left to imagine their harrowing experience.
00:39 However, thanks to Andre Overdahl's upcoming long-gestating film The Last Voyage of the
00:44 Demeter, one no longer needs to imagine.
00:47 "Evil is on board.
00:50 Powerful evil."
00:53 The film is set entirely on the Demeter, depicting the crew discovering their dwindling numbers,
00:57 and the slow realization that a demonic vampire may be on board.
01:02 Dracula is played by Spanish actor Javier Botet, an experienced actor when it comes
01:06 to playing monsters and creatures.
01:08 Botet has already appeared in several high-profile genre pictures, usually covered in makeup,
01:13 such as the title character in Andy Muschietti's Mama and the leprous hobo in the same director's
01:18 It movies.
01:19 "Do you think this will help me, Eddie?"
01:24 He also played the titular Slenderman, the Crooked Man in The Conjuring 2, and Key-Faced
01:29 in Insidious The Last Key.
01:30 He even provided the motion-capture performance for the monsters in Alien Covenant.
01:35 Botet is often cast as monsters and ghosts, largely because of his striking and appealing
01:40 looks.
01:41 He stands at 6'7" and lives with a rare condition called Marfan Syndrome, which gives
01:45 him long fingers and loose joints.
01:48 As he recently told the BBC, he uses his hyper-elasticity as a performing advantage.
01:53 Marfan Syndrome, a genetic condition, affects the joints and connective tissues in the human
01:58 body, causing them to loosen and elongate.
02:01 Those with the syndrome typically have very long fingers and toes, tend to stand tall
02:05 and thin, and have curved spines.
02:08 It's not a serious condition, and those who have it live ordinarily long lives.
02:12 However, the condition does have the potential to cause complications in one's vision thanks
02:16 to a loosening of the ocular connective tissue.
02:19 At its worst, it can affect the heart.
02:21 The syndrome also leaves one astonishingly flexible, and Botet has been able to contort
02:26 his body in a way most ordinary contortionists cannot, a talent he has always possessed.
02:31 He recalled to the BBC,
02:32 "I have a disease called Marfan syndrome.
02:35 It makes people skinnier, taller, and very flexible.
02:38 So I was all my life very flexible, all my life doing weird tricks and things to enjoy
02:43 with my friends using very creepy movement."
02:45 In 2005, when Botet was 28, he landed his first film acting role, playing a humanoid
02:51 creature in Brian Yuzna's Beneath Still Waters.
02:55 Two years later, he landed a plum role in the first of two Wreck movies, wherein he
02:59 played a Portuguese girl named Tristana, who was infected with a sort of demon virus.
03:04 While promoting the sequel, Wreck 2, at a horror convention in Spain, Botet was approached
03:08 by Muschietti about the possibility of appearing in a short called Mama.
03:11 He accepted.
03:12 A year after, Guillermo del Toro was to produce an English-language remake of the short, and
03:17 Botet was officially on the Hollywood scene.
03:20 Guillermo would eventually cast Botet in three different ghost roles in his haunted house
03:24 picture Crimson Peak.
03:26 Botet's movements are so eerie and unique that many audience members assume that his
03:29 roles are constructed through elaborate CGI.
03:32 Botet wanted to go on the record to explain that it's all him.
03:36 Some of the makeup effects and hair are enhanced with CGI, but that is his face and his body.
03:41 About Mama in particular, he told the BBC,
03:44 "So nobody really knew that 90 percent of what they saw was totally mine, was physical
03:48 work.
03:49 So that was the real point that makes my career grow, because a lot of people knew that my
03:52 work without CGI is almost as good.
03:55 It doesn't need much more help in digital."
03:57 Botet went on to elaborate that he prefers real performances in horror movies, saying,
04:01 "When there's something digital, anything can happen.
04:04 It's like a cartoon.
04:05 You lose the scare and the fear."
04:07 [music]