TL;DR – An interesting idea and a tense watch, but it never seems to find its feet and feels drawn out.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to see this film

The Last Voyage of the Demeter Review –

Well, it looks like vampires are back in vogue, specifically the first pop-culture vampiric icon, Dracula. Already this year, we have gotten Renfield, a more satirical take on the walking unholy monster that lives off the blood of others. But today, we dive back into a more traditional horror telling of the character building from an exert of the original Bram Stoker novel.

So to set the scene, it is July 6^th, 1897, and in the port of Varna in Bulgaria, the merchant ship Demeter has docked to pick up cargo and welcome new hands. Captain Elliot (Liam Cunningham) is impressed by Clemens’ (Corey Hawkins) quick actions in saving his grandson Toby (Woody Norman) from a falling crate, so he lets him come on as the ship’s doctor. But some of these new crates are stamped with a dragon, which freaks out one of the new crew members, who runs off the ship before they can embark. All is fine until one of the crates falls over as they pass through the Aegean Sea, and they fine a girl barely alive. It is then that the killings start.

What I liked about this film is that it understands that its audience knows the threat that Dracula (Javier Botet) is to the crew, so it does not waste time pretending otherwise. Once he starts killing the crew, you feel his menace every moment when the Sun sets. Every shadow and flash of lighting use the negative space as a potential looming doom. The Demeter sets look amazing, and you feel the confinement of being stuck in a small area with a monster. Every day you try to prepare for the coming night, all while Bear McCreary’s high and pulsating strings warn you of the imminent blood-soaked doom. Also, getting more David Dastmalchian in movies is nice, and Liam Cunningham is the right choice for the captain.

While this is a blood mess of a film that goes harder in places that actually shocked me, it also has some flaws. In many novel adaptations, the big problem is condensing all the information into a move runtime. Here we have the opposite problem in that we are taking one chapter and then expanding it. Unfortunately, this means that you can feel the padding across the film to draw it out. This is not helped in any way by the in-medias res opening that removes any doubt about the ending for anyone who hadn’t read the book undercutting the horror much like the recent Evil Dead Rise. It means that while there are tense and exciting moments here, getting to them is a slog.

In the end, do we recommend The Last Voyage of the Demeter? Unfortunately, while this film goes hard in places, and honestly shocked me. It also bored me at times. This wide oscillation with the tone and knowing how it would end didn’t work. If you liked The Last Voyage of the Demeter, we would recommend Prey.    

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you watched The Last Voyage of the Demeter?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of The Last Voyage of the Demeter
Directed by – André Øvredal
Screenplay by – Bragi Schut Jr. & Zak Olkewicz
Story by – Bragi Schut Jr.
Based on – “The Captain’s Log” from Dracula by Bram Stoker
Music by – Bear McCreary
Cinematography by – Tom Stern
Edited by – Patrick Larsgaard
Production/Distribution Companies – DreamWorks Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, Storyworks Productions, Studio Babelsberg, Phoenix Pictures, Wise Owl Media, Universal Pictures & StudioCanal
Starring – Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Javier Botet, Woody Norman, Jon Jon Briones, Stefan Kapičić, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Martin Furulund, Chris Walley & Nicolo Pasetti
Rating – Australia: MA15+; Canada: 14A; Germany: 16; New Zealand: na; United Kingdom: na; United States: R