‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ Review: “A Fun, Eerie Creature Feature”

The legend of Vlad the Impaler or Dracula has many different iterations. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the most popular worldwide version. The Tale of the Walachian ruler who was known for torturing and mutilating his enemies, who was turned into a vampire by a man in a cave, in an effort to save his kingdom. Stoker’s version is usually the most adapted. The Last Voyage of the Demeter is the latest version of Stoker’s story. Specifically, the seventh chapter, the Captain’s Log.

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter follows the Demeter crew after an English crew finds their ship off the coast, and discovers the Captain’s Log. Their story starts as they dock in Romania and get the new cargo. They recruit people to help them on the voyage, but there’s a mysterious box in the cargo with a dragon on it. According to legend, this box is a bad omen, and many of the men recruited back out and offer the Demeter their blessings. Then, there’s Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a young doctor willing to risk it all and join the voyage.

As the Demeter hits the open seas, strange things begin to happen. Livestock gets killed, crew members begin to see things, and a strange young woman, Anna (Aisling Franciosi), appears. Anna is sick and needs blood transfusions from Clemens to live. As the days go by and more strange things happen Anna awakes, and things go vastly horrible. A creature emerges and wreaks havoc that can only be caused by the genius of Vlad, making the crew go to desperate measures to stop him.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a creepy and slow-paced creature feature. Writers Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz do a wonderful job of making this as eerie as possible. Pretty much the entire film takes place on the boat, so not having much of a set to work with; the writing had to be crisp. The anxiety-inducing build to the third act was a lot of fun. They slowly laid out the rules of a vampire film and the whole bit. Which only made it that much more fun.

André Øvredal understands horror in a way that seems to be seamless. He seems to commit to the genre and its rules. Creature features are either ridiculous over-the-top gore fest or slow-paced creepy films. Either way, they seem to be a lot of fun. Øvredal goes with the serious slow pace and I’m sure it’s because Stoker’s book has so much critical acclaim. So, naturally, Øvredal wanted to stay on pace with his wicked ocean-set film.

Bear McCreary’s score very much matches the unsettling film you are watching and is extremely creepy. He too seems to understand the genre as much as Øvredal. The Last Voyage of the Demeter benefits from surrounding elements like the score and cinematography from Roman Osin and Tom Stern. Again, this film takes place on a boat, so they had to be precise with everything given such a small setting.

Each shot in The Last Voyage of the Demeter is near perfect. The build-up to seeing Dracula is full is wonderful. Would it have benefited them to just go all out? Absolutely, but in this context, it helped. It was a slow build that actually pays off. Osin and Stern along with editing did that very well. Hawkins and Franciosi are fantastic in their roles. Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, and Woody Norman are also standouts in the cast. Each actor knew their role very well, and it all worked out.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a film I enjoyed a lot, though it is far from perfect. It actually suffers from the slow pace, and I still believe turning one specific chapter into a film was a bad mistake. Still, we get to see Dracula in his most evil form along with some pretty good kills. Hopefully, if they decide to make a sequel to this, it isn’t attached to the Dark Universe, but its own thing like WB’s Joker. – Rascal F. Kennedy

Rating: 7.5/10

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is currently in theaters!

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