The Last Voyage of the Demeter – Review
118 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Bragi F. Schut, Zak Olkewicz (from Bram Stoker’s Dracula)
Directed by Andre Ovredal
**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below, then listen as he and Ryan discuss the movie in more depth. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
Based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the terrifying story of the merchant ship Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo—fifty unmarked wooden crates—from Carpathia to London.
Based on Chapter 7 of Bram Stoker’s classic novel, The Last Voyage of the Demeter writers Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz take a few meager log entries and spin a tale of terror and survival aboard the titular vessel, attempting to fill in a void from the Dracula timeline we all know.
Like Stoker’s novel, The Last Voyage of the Demeter spins itself up as a Gothic horror, painting the screen with dark, moody, indistinct-yet-familiar settings designed to heighten our sense of tension and anxiety, and this formula works, at least for a bit.
All too soon, we find the creature rising from its crate in the hold, first killing the livestock kept aboard, then beginning to feed on the ship’s crew.
This is made either more or less interesting for us because the first thing the crew finds, before the killing even starts, is a Romani woman buried inside one of the FIFTY boxes of dirt in their hold after it shifts and breaks open. The new ship’s doctor (Corey Hawkins), immediately diagnoses her with a blood infection and begins treating her with a series of blood transfusions in an attempt to break it’s hold.
In 1897, I’m not sure how he managed to make that diagnosis with nothing more than a stethoscope, but such is the wonder of movie writing, I suppose.
As she begins to improve, the killings begin, and one could almost believe she was the cause of it, except director Andre Ovredal commits the nearly unpardonable sin so many monster movies make: he shows us the monster too earlier, too often.
So we know for certain we are now in for a fairly standard monster chase horror film. Any possibility of setting up a prolonged period of uncertainty about the events for our cast of characters is gone.
The cast, led by Hawkins, includes the always great Liam Cunningham as the Demeter’s captain, with young Woody Norman (C’mon, C’mon) as his grandson and David Dastmalchian as the first mate and heir apparent to the Captain’s post upon their arrival back in London.
I feel, as much as I enjoy Dastmalchian, that Hollywood is trying to “make” him happen of late. Not sure why I feel that way; I can’t quantify it, but it feels that way.
The rest of the crew is a typic band of 19th century seamen of varied backgrounds; all competent, but ultimately interchangeable.
As for the beast itself, there’s an issue; while the design of the undead, blood-sucking beast is interesting enough, it’s all we ever see. A combination of the Thin Man and every other version of Dracula we’ve seen before. He begins as an almost Gollum-esque figure, gaunt and gangly,
moving adeptly yet strangely through the ship. Filling out as he continues to feed, he eventually becomes able to fly, his arms becoming wings with the addition of flying the now traditional bat-like flaps under his elongated arms.
Interesting, but this design makes it feel as though Dracula is a NEW vampire, evolving from a primitive state into something more, instead of the distinguished noble who transforms into the beast when he desires. This shift in the development and presentation of the character changes the fundamental fabric of Dracula, and we never, in fact, see the “human” version of him, which is a crime, because the hidden monster has always been the more terrifying one. The face of humanity hides more horror than any undead beast can present outright, and so an opportunity was lost to elevate the Demeter from being just another monster movie.
The Count deserved better.
I wonder if this is supposed to be some sort of back-door prequel into Universal’s still-nascent Monster-verse? Some shot at reminding people of the catalog of creatures under their purview?
If so, this is infinitely better than the recent Mummy attempt, but still lacks an essential something to make this more than a 1950s-inspired monster feature.
If you’d like to see an arguably better suspenseful horror from Ovredal, might I suggest The Autopsy of Jane Doe?
The Last Voyage of the Demeter sails into theaters Friday, August 11, and stars Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Chris Walley, Jon Jon Briones, Stefan Kapicic, Martin Furulund, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Javier Botet, and Woody Norman.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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