‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ Movie Review: A Bloody, Old-Fashioned Monster Movie
Photo from Universal Pictures
From Jeremy Kibler
“Bat on a Boat” or “Vamp Ship” would’ve rolled off the tongue better, but The Last Voyage of the Demeter is the name of the latest incarnation in the Dracula lore. Based on the chapter “The Captain’s Log” in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” the film is essentially Alien on the high seas. Instead of a Xenomorph on the spaceship Nostromo, it’s the Count on the titular Demeter. Stripped of any seductive, gothic romanticism, director André Øvredal’s atmospheric tale gets to be a vicious, bloody monster movie with some gnarly bite.
A cargo vessel sets sail in 1897 from Romania to England, led by Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) and his first mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), or at least that’s the plan. A bunch of wooden crates, one filled with dirt and emblazoned with the foreboding seal of a dragon, should be a red flag, but it’s too late. Dracula is here and he is famished, first taking out the livestock. The crew is doomed, and a barely-alive Romanian stowaway named Anna (Aisling Franciosi) later awakens and lets them know what they’re up against.
Writers Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz give us a compelling lead character in Clemens, a Cambridge-educated doctor whose plans were dashed due to a hospital not liking the color of his skin. He’s played by the charismatic Corey Hawkins (In the Heights), who gets the only real character evolution. Apart from Clemens and the captain’s young grandson Toby (Woody Norman), we don’t have deep investment in these characters. Most of the interchangeable crew members are just there to be fodder and sustenance for Drac, but the performances are all solid and where they need to be.
Director André Øvredal (he of the very scary The Autopsy of Jane Doe and the ghoulishly fun Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) knows what to show and what to suggest (dog lovers should still be warned). It may be a foregone conclusion that there aren’t many (or any) survivors on board the Demeter by the end, but Øvredal makes sure it’s grim fun watching these sailors get picked off on their last voyage. He also gets a lot of mileage out of the tight quarters on the ship for tension and scares, especially when young Toby holes himself up in his grandfather’s quarters.
When standing on deck in the dead of night and popping out to show his Kurt Barlow resemblance from Salem’s Lot, Dracula (played by monster extraordinaire Javier Boteta) is the kind of threateningly creepy monster we fear. Practical effects are always going to be more effective than jumpy CGI, but the mixture of Botet’s slinky physicality and computer enhancements (when Dracula is in bat form) is pretty damn cool. A visual reference to The Descent is also welcome.
If Universal’s Dark Universe—interconnected films rebooting the classic movie monsters—hadn’t crashed and burned before it even started, this would have been a promising beginning. The Last Voyage of the Demeter could have lost its redundant 4-weeks-earlier prologue for a tighter edit, but at least its epilogue is more of an exciting tease for more to come than a cheap threat.
Rating: 3/5
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is currently in theaters.
