This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn't exist.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a film that uses a well-worn pop culture character in a familiar setting type, with slightly thin characters and underwhelming scares. It is not a complete bore, it’s just not much to write home about. This is a real shame for a film based on a novel comprised of letters. The Last Voyage of the Demeter feels like the squandering of a known quantity. It brushes a few times against excellent execution, but never quite nails it. Its most memorable imagery focuses on gore, which is demonstrated with technical proficiency. The plot structure is competent, the production design and set decoration are sound, and the sore communicates the tone while matching the Victorian maritime setting. Nonetheless, The Last Voyage of the Demeter underwhelms, neither positively raw nor rare, simply medium in flavor and texture.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is based on the captain’s log from the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. This information would be more compelling as an endnote than a preface, but there it is on screen to start the film. Viewers soon find ourselves following Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a physician and sailor who contracts with the crew of the Demeter after the dragon insignias on some cargo crates scare off their initial hire. The crew, Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham), first mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), Abrams (Chris Walley), Olgaren (Stefan Kapicic), Larsen (Martin Furulund), and Joseph the God-fearing cook (Jon Jon Briones) journey from southeastern Europe to England, gradually finding themselves hunted in the night by Dracula. Many of them are turned into his thralls after being killed by him, coming under psychic control but similarly in danger of death by sunlight. One notable change from traditional pop culture vampire orthodox is that silver crosses have no effect on this vampire, which leads to some captivating displays of power during sequences of murder. The general look of the vampire is very bat-like; not human or sexy, which is compelling in a way but the editing and lighting don’t adequately contribute to the terror that the grotesque bat person should produce.
The most compelling character is Aisling Franciosi’s Anna, a member of the village intimidated and controlled by Dracula. Packaged in one of the dragon insignia crates and assumed to be a stowaway, she is a solid secondary protagonist. Anna describes the village offering her to Dracula, and the subsequent blood-draining relationship as rationed food on the vessel in terms that give the character’s plight as the sole woman on the vessel thematic weight. She sounds like she’s relating the unwelcome visits of a nightly sexual assailant that she’s in bondage to, a clear metaphor if not literally true in this incarnation of the character. Meanwhile, before the exact relationship between her and the beast is discovered, some of the characters take her as a bad omen.
Corey Hawkins is decent as Clemons, but neither elevates nor overwhelms. In the third act he’s given more backstory that feels disconnected from the themes he’s playing with. It comes off a bit heavy-handed. The disconnect isn’t completely unforgivable, but the backend loading of this pathos precludes it paying off effectively. Perhaps it would have sung more clearly connected throughout the story, or maybe the earlier allusions and references to racism just feel relatively flat aside from a later anecdote that feels mistimed in the context of the story. It is an attempt to give more motivation than is necessary for the character. Trying to address the casting of a black lead through the story, some of the interactions and declarations feel slightly anachronistic. They don’t’ sound like they’re speaking from the point of view of 2023, but it doesn’t seem quite like the appropriate era for the way the analysis is expressed. In any case, this choice lends the film an air of uncertainty and lacking confidence, as if director André Øvredal and writers Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz don’t feel the audience will care about the characters without this component or will accuse them of colorblindness and tone-deafness if they do not address it. More importantly, it expresses a lack of trust in the audience’s own intuition and deductive reasoning and betrays not a great understanding of the historic tendencies of African-descendent men to work on boats and docks. In short, it would be fine to just have him there and having him express his experiences with discrimination would work better drawn out more cleanly across the film than seemingly stapled on at the end.
Referring to the villain as “the devil” but giving Christian objects no power over him was a smooth move to convey to the audience the ignorance of the characters. This helps establish their concern and distress, the anxiety and fear of being haunted in the home that is also your workplace. The Last Voyage of the Demeter does also not glamorize working on a sailing vessel in the time of the transition to steam. It seems grueling work. This is a key to making the setting feel real and therefore making the characters feel of their time or as best we can imagine their time. There is an air of unknowing among the characters which provides the plot with form and intrigue. The climax itself is watchable even as the narrative framing device evaporates in a way suiting the story – the captain is in no state to continue maintaining a log. Still, it never knocks you off your feet and the falling action betrays a sly studio ambition which will almost certainly go unfulfilled.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a bit of a dud. It ends in a way that feels briefly remarkable and then immediately unforgivable. The film does convey pain, grief, and the spectacle of death decently well, especially in scenes using spontaneous combustion. It lacks for characterization, which could be more acceptable if it succeeded more act invoking terror. There is a general gloom and somberness, occasional dread, but little in the way of genuine fright. It is not the most aesthetically offensive or thematically annoying film I’ve seen this year, but it will likely be forgotten, its short-lived meme status paling in comparison to the inferior vampire movie from last year.
This is disappointing, We need a good horror suspense movie. This story had the potential to be a scary as hell, monster in the shadows terror like John Carpenters the Fog.