The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

Please Demeter

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter
USA/UK/Canada/India/Germany/
Italy/Sweden/Switzerland/Malta 2023
Directed by André Øvredal
Universal/Amblin

Warning: Slight spoilers nipping at your neck.

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, directed by André Øvredal who gave us Troll Hunter (reviewed by me here) and The Autopsy Of Jane Doe (reviewed here), is a film I’ve been wanting to see on these shores for a while now. It was due for a cinema release in the UK last year (as it got everywhere else, it would seem) but Lionsgate, who were to be the distributors over here, suddenly pulled it and themselves out of the UK market altogether at that time (is what I’ve read but I’m sure I’ve seen their logo on stuff since then). So it never got a general release over here... not at the cinema nor on physical media (and I suspect not on streaming yet, either). So I just got fed up waiting and took a route to see it which, to be fair, was available to me even a month or so before the film was originally due to be released... I just wanted to see it at a cinema at the time. But, don’t worry, I will be giving some money back to the company at some point soon because I will definitely be shipping over a US Blu Ray of this one pretty sharpish (when I can afford the exorbitant postage that country charges these days).

Okay, so if you don’t recognise the reference in the title... well it’s more than spelled out in the opening of the film but, basically, this is a take on the events that happened from the captain’s log of the Demeter, on its journey taking 50 boxes of soil from Transylvania to where it washed up as a wreck at Whitby in Yorkshire. As told via a brief section of logs in Chapter 7 of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Now, the film is well made and well acted by the likes of Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi and genre star Liam Cunningham as the Captain of the Demeter. That being said, if you’re a Dracula purist, then you should be forewarned that, although the start and end point are pretty much the same... the film does take some liberties with the events as described in Stoker’s original novel. So, yeah... don’t expect a verbatim adaptation of those paragraphs within the chapter. They... sort of match up.

That out of the way... when did a screen version of the Dracula story (even a small part of it such as this) ever match up to the original Stoker very well anyway (not very often, truth be told)? So, it’s a good addition to the body of cinematic Dracula tales over the years and, as it happens, one of the more competent and entertaining ones. The writers on this one have managed to populate the story with some likeable characters you will absolutely care about when confronted with peril and, it’s a quite likeable horror romp, to be sure. There are even a few jump scares thrown into the mix.

And let’s not forget the look of the Dracula ‘creature’ in this. He’s quite obviously based on the Count Orlock variant version as seen in F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu - A Symphony Of Horror in 1922 and various other iterations of the character taking that classic look over the years. Indeed there’s a remake of Nosferatu hitting screens again at the end of this year. And the creature here is realised very well. I was a little worried about how they were going to marry up the beast here with what Dracula was going on to do when he got to England but the epilogue of the story, so to speak, shows him blending into things quite nicely. However, unlike the original version of Nosferatu and the 1931 version of Dracula, there is no Renfield character in this iteration.

Now there are a few clichés thrown into the mix. For instance, as soon as you see there’s a ship’s dog, you just know he’s going to be one of the vampire’s first snacks. And sure enough, the dog along with all the livestock are slaughtered fairly early on in the picture (thus destroying the crew’s meat rations in the process). But, there is also a young kid in this too and, a big round of applause to the film makers for not doing the usual and having him spared the horror of the voyage. He actually comes to a very gruesome end at some point (yeah, that’s the spoiler folks... you were warned). To be fair, though, if you’ve read the novel you’ll know there are no survivors (even though there’s a big ‘well actually’ moment for the film... perhaps the producers wanted a sequel but... hmm... they’ll need to do a prequel too, to do it properly).

But, lots of nice shots, with a nice colour palette and lots of creaking sound effects, as the ship goes on its journey and various, diminishing crewmen are picked off one by one as they stand watch each night. Unfortunately, not all the laws of vampire mythology seem to hold sway here. Yes, sunlight burns and kills those poor souls that Dracula has started drinking and so he and the majority of his prey (those who are not having regular blood transfusions... it gets complicated, okay?) only come out when the sun is down. Having said that, though, cruciforms/crosses seem to have absolutely no effect on the creature at all. Similarly, the crew underestimate it all the way through by not being familiar with the various vampire laws and traditions, such as a modern cinematic audience is... so pretty much all of their time they believe shooting this creature will be their salvation.

But, any inconsistencies with the source material aside... I had a really good time with The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, it has to be said. I’m going up to the first day of the 2024 Frigthfest later today (at time of writing), where there is actually a lone, subtitled for hard of hearing print being shown as a ‘one off’ over the course of the five days (although I’ve not got a ticket to that one myself) so I’m hoping some nice stall holder has got a US Blu Ray of it in his merchandise stall, if I’m lucky.* Either way, this is one of the better of the current crop of vampire films being made these days and I’d thoroughly recommend this one to fans of that subgenre. Much fangs for this one.

*No such luck but a postage free copy from WOW HD arrived through my door a few days ago.