The Last Voyage of the Demeter, inspired by a single chilling chapter, “The Captain’s Log,” from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula, opens in theaters today. Is it worth all the hype? I can answer that.
Just a heads up, unlike the majority of our reviews, this one does feature mild spoilers.
Directed by André Øvredal, the film tells the terrifying story of the merchant ship Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo—fifty unmarked wooden crates—from Carpathia to London, with the crew unaware of the horrors they contain.
The impressive cast for the film includes Corey Hawkins (In the Heights, Straight Outta Compton) as Clemens, a doctor who joins the Demeter crew. Hawkins gives a fantastic performance, bringing empathy and wonder to the film. Aisling Franciosi (Game of Thrones, The Nightingale) plays Anna, a stowaway. Once her reality is revealed, your heart breaks for her, but at the same time, she emotes a strength like no one else aboard. Javier Botet stars as Dracula. While it’s not the Dracula we’ve come to expect (thank God), Botet delivers a vampire that is animalistic and fierce, a lethal beast of long appendages, fangs, and claws, it’s thin and ugly. I love the fact that we get a vicious, more creature-than-man character. This isn’t your beautiful, romanticized, suave vampire, as we see so often in films and series like Interview with the Vampire. This Dracula is a monster whose appearance gives a nod to the 1922 horror Nosferatu but is even more beastly.
The special effects team did an absolutely fantastic job! Everything in the film looks great, including the ship where the film plays out, which becomes a character itself. It’s realistic, massive, worn, and creaks with each wave. The best part? It’s mostly practical.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is great at delivering dualities. It’s elegant and rustic. It’s entertaining and nightmare-inducing, beautiful and brutal. This drama and action-packed film will give you moments of light and hope in the darkness, then turn around and rips your heart out, and you thank it for doing so.
The challenge of any movie, no matter the genre, is the same, to make the viewer feel something, anything, and this movie does that with ease, taking you through stages of horror, shock, hope, heartache, and awe, mostly at the same time.
Writers Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz should be applauded for their creation. And director Øvredal, who was also behind The Autopsy of Jane Doe (a personal favorite), proves once again that the horror genre is where he belongs, delivering a vampire movie that we can sink our teeth into.
I’ll admit I had my doubts before watching The Last Voyage of the Demeter. We are so often let down by blockbuster horror films these days. But that is not the case here. So, the obvious question is, do I recommend it? Yes, absolutely. You should definitely sink your teeth into The Last Voyage of the Demeter. I will say this, if you get the chance to see it while it is in theaters, do so. It adds to the experience.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter sets sail for theaters on August 11, 2023. For more on the film, check out our interviews with Special Effects Makeup Artist Göran Lundström and the film’s Production Designer, Edward Thomas, who take us inside the film and tells us what it takes to make a movie like this.
