"I was doubtful about The Last Voyage of the Demeter, but it's a throat-ripping good time. It reminded me of the best of the Hammer movies from the Sixties and Seventies".
-STEPHEN KING
One of the most iconic images from the original Lugosi classic DRACULA is indeed its scenes around the Demeter. An almost pure black ghost ship rolling in through the fog, full of countless unseen corpses. The only lunatic living soul left smiles up out of the darkness, and we never see how many died or know exactly what happened. and we don't need to really.
But ya know... why not give $45 million bucks to fill in the gaps for us...
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (also known as Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter in some international markets) is a 2023 American supernatural horror film directed by André Øvredal and written by Bragi F. Schut Jr. and Zak Olkewicz. It is an adaptation of "The Captain's Log", a chapter from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The crew of the merchant ship Demeter sets sail from Carpathia to London to deliver a cargo of 50 unmarked wooden crates. However, they soon discover they're not alone as Dracula's unholy presence turns the trip into a nightmarish fight for survival. As of September 8, 2023The Last Voyage of the Demeter has grossed $13.6 million in the United States and Canada and $7.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $21.3 million.
I always imagined the Demeter disaster to have taken place in a single bloody night of mayhem, but this movie drags it out way too much without any strong characters to cling to. A whole ship full of red shirts in a movie formula as old as 1931, This movie is just... forgettable. It's not here to do a single thing differently as far as tone, structure, directing, characters, even the setting doesn't really feel that unique or interesting. Just like in ALIEN, THE THING, PREDATOR, etc, you have a core crew with a variety of backgrounds trying to deal with a crazy-ass monster man picking them off one by one.
Its somewhat soulless genre shlock that will definitely get eaten up by the NETFLIX cultists of crappy creepy cinema, but will be pretty quickly forgotten by horror fans.
3/10
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