Regular readers of movie reviews will recognize the words “beautifully-designed” and “handsomely mounted” as film critic speak for “The blind date we’re setting you up with has…a great personality.”

So it is with the lovely-to-look-at, well-cast old school horror tale “The Last Voyage of the Demeter.”

It’s got the great character actor Liam Cunningham going for it, Corey Hawkins as a sturdy lead and David Dastmalchian as a gloomy first mate, a beautifully-worn and recreated 19th century barquentine (‘Ees no a “SCHOONER,” ye lubber screenwriters. Yarrr.) and access to the finest backlot water tank for filming sea stories in all of Europe — in Malta — going for it.

The violence is gory and a Gothic air of dread and “doom” expressed by one and all sets the tone.

But as we know it’s “The Last Voyage,” Dracula’s sea journey from the Balkans to Britain, we know how it comes out, more or less. There’s little urgency or growing alarm about the sense that something is killing the livestock — and not eating it — and biting the crew to death, one member at a time.

It’s violent to an eyes-averting degree, but rarely scary. The script doesn’t follow the “Dracula/Vampire movie” rules, not rigidly, anyway. Dracula is a beast, with little trace of an actor underneath him, little chance he’d pass for a bloke you’d look past in a pub. And the “Demeter” just drifts between abrupt scripted-violence and abruptly-summoned storms, looking good but not really getting the job of frightening us done.

The framing device is the shipwreck on England’s shore that Bram Stoker included in his novel, the narration provided by the captain (Cunningham) and the journey all about how “he got here (the UK)” and started seducing women and biting necks.

Hawkins, of “Straight Outta Compton” and “BlackKklansman,” is Mr. Clemens, a Cambridge-educated doctor and curious man of science who can’t find work because of the color of his skin. A chance intervention on a Bulgarian dock lands him in the Demeter’s small crew, a “charter” trip by sail in the age of steam.

In the hold are a stack of crates embossed with the mark of a dragon. That spooks the locals, who refuse to load the cargo, with at least one of them declining the chance to sign on to sail.

Hawkins must literally “learn the ropes” and the ways of this creaky old windjammer, from the hold to the wheel and masts, the knocking on wood signal used to summon help (it’s heard throughout the ship), and the captain’s grandson Toby (“Oliver Twist” mop-topped Woody Norman).

The crew is a mixed-bag of Slavs and Scandinavians, with the exotic cook (Jon Jon Briones) a religious fanatic who might come in handy. Or not.

But when the new guy stumbles across a stowaway, near death, in the crates — a woman (Aisling Franciosi), aka “bad luck” on a ship — the ship’s fate seems sealed.

“We let Poseidon deal with stowaways,” Wojchek mutters. But there’ll be none of that. Not that it will help. Because as the doctor nurses her back to life, blood is shed.

“Evil is on board,” the men and woman of superstition try to convince the man-of-science doctor. “Powerful evil.”

The script provides a few good lines and the cast a few decent moments. But “old school” Universal horror — dating from the studio’s 1930s history — means “old hat,” in most cases.

Dracula is glimpsed and eventually wholly seen, but has no personality. “Powerful evil” rarely does.

Consulting “the bite-marked Roma girl” provides no new wrinkles to a timeworn tale.

They set out, fight the elements, search and re-search the ship after the rats disappear, the livestock are slaughtered and this or that man on watch dies or disappears. There’s little sense of growing alarm and horror, their greed to collect a bonus is so great that they don’t put in to port, and one and all seem resigned to their fate.

That includes “Troll Hunter” director André Øvredal, who content to make this Universal horror “universe” look beautifully lived-on, gruesomely died-in, and “handsomely mounted” when what it wants is the rising dread and blasts of terror that the name “Dracula” has inspired for over a ce

Rating: R, graphic, bloody violence

Cast: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, David Dastmalchian, Woody Norman, Stefan Kapicic, Javier Botot, Nikolai Nikolaeff and Liam Cunningham.

Credits: Directed by André Øvredal, scripted by Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz, based on the novel by Bram Stoker. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:58