The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
The saga of the doomed Demeter takes up less than ten pages in Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel, and it’s pretty bare-boned, causing the nameless narrator who presents it to chalk it up as a “mystery of the sea.”
Well, Stoker’s novel may have seen it that way, but Hollywood sees it as space for a movie, which leads us to The Last Voyage of the Demeter. It’s not the first time the ship has been in a movie. Depending on which version we’re talking about, the Demeter’s role invariably ends when the ship comes into port and the local townspeople start scratching their heads. Renfield might be lurching around or not. Either way, the “mystery of the sea” bit is left more or less intact.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter sets out to solve that mystery, pretty much. A doctor named Clemens is recruited to work on the Demeter after he saves the life of Toby, the captain’s grandson and one of the crewmembers bolts. He’s a kind, steady fellow who, as he says, just wants life to make sense.
Heh. He’s not going to find that aboard the Demeter, especially once the livestock all mysteriously die. While poking around the ship, Clemens discovers one of the crates on board has burst open, revealing a giant pile of dirt and a girl whose name turns out to be Anna. Clemens nurses her back to health, and meanwhile the crew start dying one by one.
Things reveal themselves gradually, of course, and eventually everyone gets a little bonkers wondering how in the world they’re going to get home or if they’re even going to get home.
Demeter is extremely well-cast; my favorite was Corey Hawkins as Clemens by far because this guy has so much patience and potential that he’s never been allowed to realize, and he really puts the crew to shame. They’re all about what they’re going to do with their money when they get into port, and Clemens wants something money can’t buy.
It all moves along at a nice clip; we’re allowed to get to know these characters and like them, or not, before the carnage starts, and the sets look very true to life, as everything is a bit slimy and rats literally crawl over the men as they sleep. Speaking of the rats, they’re such a part of the ship that when we don’t see them we know there’s trouble.
The Dracula creature was also nicely done, and I know other critics have pointed this out (Jeremy Jahns, for one), but he gave me Gollum vibes, and later Nosferatu. There’s a scene when the monster looks over his shirt collar and it’s a total throwback, which is pretty cool.
Here’s the thing, though: I don’t usually go in for horror movies and I really don’t like slasher flicks, but even I could see the cliches and predictability going on in Demeter. There are plenty of jump scares and blood spurting from throats. We see characters leap out of their skins when someone puts a hand on their shoulders. The music always goes ear-piercingly shrill whenever something bad is about to happen. A clap of thunder and lightning always reveals the creature for a split second.
And we can usually guess who’s going to get their throat slashed next based on who’s on watch. Or who left the cabin they were told to stay in with the door locked. The biggest question is how the Demeter manages to run aground the way it does, which I’m not going to spoil.
The other thing about this movie is while it gets a lot about the canon right, it retcons it at the same time. There was no woman aboard Stoker’s Demeter and there were no survivors. No, I’m not going to spoil anything there, either. The movie will probably land differently for different people depending on their level of Dracula fandom.
I think the bottom line with Demeter is that even though it might be a little predictable from a horror standpoint and it falls into the retcon trap, it’s a compelling movie for its own sake and in that regard it more than works.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is currently in theaters. Rated R.
My grade: B+
Principal Cast: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Jon Jon Briones, Stefan Kapicic, Nikolai Nikolaef, Javier Botet, Woody Norman, Martin Furulund, Chris Walley
Directed by Andre Ovredal.
Written by Bragi F. Schut, Stefan Ruzowitsky, and Zak Olkewicz.