Last Voyage of the Demeter

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It’s a common argument and complaint right now that mainstream Hollywood and the big studios in general are plying audiences with too many reboots, and remakes, and piggyback films, etc. I agree with this; when you think of the wealth of original content that there is spanning human history why would you gamble in making another Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean? What percentage of literature is unfilmable, how much is horded by those who own the rights, and how much of it just scares the studio heads? This thought is in my head right now because I've just come back from seeing a very good film based on a tiny portion of Bram Stoker's, Dracula.

Last Voyage of the Demeter chronicles the journey of the most celebrated monster from Transylvania to England. The crew of the Demeter are a motley bunch, but staunch and hearty, bound for England with the promise of a nice bonus if they get there in record time. Their cargo is a bunch of crates. When a storm upturns one of the crates, a sickly woman is discovered and while the Doctor nurses her back to health, men start disappearing during the night watch. Fear and superstition runs rampant as glimpses of a strange creature are seen and one by one, the screw succumb to gruesome deaths.

The voyage of the Demeter in Stoker’s gothic classic is a very small portion of the book, nothing more a chapter and written as the captain’s log. The little substory certainly lends itself to cinematic interpretation and while it can be argued that Dracula movies have been done time and time again, this film manages to be original and a good example of all the tiny golden nuggets that are hidden in humanity’s wealth of literature and content.

The story we all know and we go into the film fully aware of what’s going to transpire within the next 2 hours. What the film does is create a cast of fleshed out and realised characters that get stories of their own before being eaten. From the stoic captain, to the religious cook, to the doctor who wants nothing more than to understand why the world works the way that it does, the crew of the Demeter become tangible characters and not just a number in the pages of this classic novel. While there is only so much you can do to bring a nameless pawn or henchman to life, the film manages to depict a compelling tale of a doomed crew that are forced to re-evaluate everything they believe in. The performances are all wonderful, everyone in every scene added depth and dimension to, what I remind you, is not much more than a single chapter in a book.

Image credit: screenrealm.com

The suspense and horror aspect of the film is achieved through an Alien style stalker use of the camera, very slow-moving shots, and stylistic closeups of the violence and gore. And then we have the villain himself. As it would be interesting but laughable to have Dracula as the captivating and charming, Gary Oldman style nobleman, the monster design returns to the classic horror of the 1920s with a Nosferatu monster with pointed ears, sharp talons, and spidery limbs. What I particularly enjoyed is the transformation that Dracula goes through on the voyage. Beginning the series of slaughters as weak, scrawny and feeble, he gains strength, shape, and even speech the more he feeds; finally regaining some semblance of a man by the film’s end.

While it’s not the greatest horror movie ever to slash its way onto a movie screen, Last Voyage of the Demeter is a fresh and creative depiction of a classic, playing on the tropes of the genre while also fleshing out a part of the novel that hardly ever gets remembered.

Director: Andre Ovredal, 2023

Cast: Corey Hawkins, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Chris Walley, Jon Jon Briones, Stefan Kapicic, Woody Norman, Martin Furuland & Aisling Franciosi