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The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is an interesting film for many reasons. It’s based on a single chapter of an iconic novel – Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it’s been inexplicably been in developmental hell for almost two decades, and the very nature of the story means everyone going into the film more or less knows how things will go, its in the title, but it’s also in some text at the start of the film, along with a brief scene that opens the film taking place at the end before we flashback to the beginning. So, any sense of tension is basically thrown out, which is an odd choice for a horror film. It almost seems like a perfect recipe for a disaster.
However, I came out really enjoying the film. Except for one thing, which I will get to in a bit. First off, the story adapts the chapter in Dracula in which the titular vampire (portrayed here by Javier Botet) is hidden on board a ship called the Demeter, which is heading to London. Captain Elliot (Liam Cunningham) leads the crew with his first mate, Wojchek (David Dastmalchian). Wojchek reluctantly hires a new crew member, a very overqualified college educated doctor named Clemens (Corey Hawkins), trying to make his way back to London. It takes time for the crew to warm up to him, but he makes friends with the Captain’s young son, Toby (Woody Norman).
Things are fine at first, but very quickly, everyone comes to realize something is wrong. First, they discover a stowaway, Anna (Aisling Franciosi), who Clemens has to heal with a blood transfusion. Then livestock is killed (trigger warming for anyone sensitive to animal death). Then crew members begin getting picked off one by one. Paranoia seeps in, emotions run high, everyone questions what exactly is going on. And before they know it, they come to realize there is some kind of beast aboard the ship, and they will have to figure out a way to kill it before reaching London.
Now…obviously…it doesn’t work. We know it doesn’t work because the rest of the Dracula book still exists, and we got that opening sequence. So, while the script from Bragi Schut Jr. and Zak Olkewicz might seem dead in the water when it comes to building any suspense, you have André Øvredal at the helm, one of the finest horror filmmakers working today, in my humble opinion. He is able to bring individual moments of tension between the characters, playing on the dynamic between the crew, their collective confusion, but above all, he relishes in the atmosphere.
This feels like a throwback to stuff like 70s Hammer, lots of fog, lots of blood, and some genuinely good sets, costumes, and period detail. This scratches a big itch of mine. I love seeing horror movies with a big budget. Granted, $37 million isn’t big by any stretch, but compared to most horror fare, it very much is. Funnily enough, Francis Ford Coppola’s similarly budgeted adaptation of Dracula is also one of my all-time favorites. I just love seeing horror that has money to throw around, seeing how filmmakers tackle a genre that typically specializes with limitations, especially if it’s a period piece. Despite taking place almost entirely on the ship, the film feels big, it a good sense of scope, and the effects, both digital and practical, are top notch.
One thing I loved about the film is that given the audience’s awareness of how the situation turns out, it dives into this sense of dread, and bleakness that swallows the film whole. From the get-go, this is a bad time for the everyone involved, and the film will kill off any character at any given point with little fanfare or parting words or even dignity. It’s cruel, mean, and absolutely savage. One particular death took me by surprise because it’s usually not the kind of character you’d see so heartlessly killed off in a mainstream Hollywood horror movie. They even add an extra bit of cruelty on top of that moments later that I found amusing (in a good way, mind you).
Which brings me to the one thing that doesn’t work. Unfortunately, it’s the last thing you see before exiting the theater, the ending itself. The film does such a good job at fully committing to the bleak nature of the material, and when we get to the ending, we get a very random tonal shift into something that is more hopeful, and confusingly enough, teasing a possible continuation that I doubt will ever actually happen. It is so at odds with what came before, and I couldn’t fathom why it ended the way it did unless it was a studio note. You honestly could shave off the last 30 seconds, and it would be a significant improvement because there is a point within the ending where you could end on a more emotionally complicated note than the one we got.
I have a feeling that The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is not going to work for a lot of people. And having taken a brief glance, it seems like a lot of critics weren’t on board either, which is honestly rather surprising to me. I don’t know what the expectations are for a film like this, but whatever you had in mind, it probably isn’t that. It’s not a goofy b-movie where Dracula is like a slasher villain on a ship, he’s actually not shown as often as you might think; it’s also not necessarily a big reinterpretation of the Dracula character/story, it simply takes this setup from this one chapter in the novel, and runs with it. And I think it tells its story quite well. The performances are really strong across the board, and the script gives some of these actors moments to shine and add layers to their characters. This is also one of the better examples I’ve seen of a character of color inserted into a period narrative where you probably wouldn’t normally see them because it doesn’t treat his skin color like an invisible part of his character, it informs his story as much as any other aspect. It’s a dark movie, it’s a sad movie, it’s a deeply harsh film, but it’s also incredibly engaging and very well made. While the ending does unfortunately leave things on a bit of a weird note, it’s not enough to overtake all the enjoyment I had with the film up to that point. I really hope we can get more horror movies of this scale in theaters.
The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is now out in theaters.