Movie Review: The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) directed by Andre Ovredal based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker

One small but very creepy part of the novel Dracula tells how he went from Transylvania to England. He had himself shipped on the Demeter along with many crates of dirt (because vampires are supposed to sleep on the soil of their home country). On the voyage, he slowly consumes the whole crew. When the ship arrives, none of the crew is alive and the dead captain is tied down to the steering wheel. 

This movie makes this bit from the novel into its own story. The focus is on a last-minute addition to the Demeter's crew, Clemens (Corey Hawkins), an educated black man from England who acts as ship's surgeon and as the scientific rationalist on board. Once they are underway and the livestock are slaughtered, he looks for a natural explanation even though the evidence does not add up to a natural cause. The captain and crew are a mixture of hard-headed seamen and superstitious guys. After a rough night of storms, they discover one of the crates has broken and a lot of dirt has spilled out. In the dirt they find a woman (Aisling Franciosi) who is barely alive. Clemens thinks she has a blood disease and starts giving her transfusions. The rest of the crew are nervous about her presence since a woman on board means bad luck. Of course, there's a much more sinister passenger on board, who slowly picks them off each night of the voyage.

The plot has a lot of familiar parts, both from the novel and from other films (and not just Dracula films). Viewers familiar with the story realize that no one is going to survive, a fact flagged up by an opening sequence where the Demeter crash lands at Whitby, England, with no crew and a disturbing story in the captain's log. The movie plays out like a haunted house/slasher film, with crew mates being killed by a shadowy monster. They have nowhere to flee to. The ship's newcomers, Clemens and the girl, provide an opportunity to explain the layout of the ship and the different tasks onboard. The ending felt a little off, especially with its hint of a possible sequel that deviates from the novel.

The atmosphere is well-depicted, with a lot of foggy nights and turbulent seas adding to the sense of doom for the crew. Dracula is depicted as a skinny, elongated gargoyle, seemingly fragile until his bursts of aggression. He becomes stronger the more often he feeds, becoming more menacing and more capable as the movie reaches its climax. The ship makes a good contained environment that forces the crew to find ways to survive since they can't flee the ship. The script is not very clever at coming up with those ideas but at least they tried. The movie is an okay horror film, nothing spectacular, nothing terrible.

Recommended if you are a Dracula fan.