Last Voyage of the Demeter - 2023 quick review
Last Voyage of the Demeter - 2023 Dir. André Øvredal, written by Braig Schut Jr. and Zak Olkewicz. Starring: Corey Hawkins (Clemens), Aisling Franciosi (Anna), Liam Cunningham (Capt. Elliot), David Dastmalchian (Wojchek), Woody Norman (Toby), Stefan Kapičić (Olgaren)
I love me a boat movie. I love me a Dracula movie. I… enjoyed this Dracula on a boat movie. It’s a reimagining of what happened during the oceanic trip Dracula makes from Romania to England. It’s a fun, fun idea of a movie and I was looking forward to this movie for so long. The source material is one chapter in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, chapter seven, which includes two articles about the Demeter sailing into harbour with a dead man at the helm, the log entries of the titular voyage, and a follow up of events from Mina Harker, largely about how her dear friend Lucy would have nightmares over all of this.
This film is trying to be Alien on a boat, but I felt that the pacing was a bit rushed. Also there were a few weird plot devices in the story that didn’t make too much sense. Dracula packed a snack in one of the boxes but only one snack. When that snack was discovered and taken into care by the ship’s crew he just went on a feeding frenzy taking out all the animals in one night.
The snack was Anna (Aisling Franciosi) a Romani woman that was given to Dracula by her village elders so he would leave the rest of the village alone. She was great once she had something to do, but a good half of her screen time was spent in a coma, while some of the sailors claimed she was a curse and would doom the ship. Corey Hawkins plays Clemens, a doctor desperate to get back to England, that no one trusts as he seems like he hasn’t worked manual labor before. Hawkins is great throughout. He is the empathetic scientist trying to make sense of the world on a ship full of superstitious men. It has the vibe of a 1950’s atomic monster film. He’s the good scientist trying to be a hero by using his brain and his big heart.
The cast has a few really memorable characters, and three that tend to blend together sadly. But the ensemble makes for a lovely character piece. It’s a shame that we know going into this how everything is going to end. And I get the opening. They wanted to show the boat being discovered so this could all be sort of a flashback deal. This way they could layer in some twists at the very end. But I kind of wanted the film to start just with the boat getting loaded up with Dracula’s “boxes of dirt and silver sand.” Then at the end have the big crash and discovery by the coast guard.
The opening was clunky. The pacing felt uneven and slightly rushed. There didn’t feel like there was as much mystery for the crew to discover. Dracula would just pop up from time to time to stare longingly into the distance then disappear. There was one cool moment in the dark on the deck of the ship where Clemens thinks he sees a crewmate but it’s actually Dracula just hidden in the shadows. I loved that bit. It was creepy. It was the chains rattling on the Nostromo scene.
I keep saying things that make it sound like I did not like Last Voyage, but I did enjoy it. It’s not super scary but it has a nice, almost classic horror feel to it. I also really like movies set on old sailing ships. That aspect of this film is just wonderful. It’s an old ship, they are up in the riggings working the sails. I’m enthralled. Full disclosure I grew up in southeast Connecticut, not too far from Mystic, CT where they have the Mystic Seaport, think Historic Williamsburg but with old whaling boats. I have always enjoyed stories of the old sea and looking at this film as just that, a horror film set during the last days of sailed ships before steam took over, the whole film kind of feels more fun.
I do want to note a few things about the actual chapter this is based off of in Dracula. Firstly, the bulk of the chapter is a correspondence reporter explaining the events of the arrival of the Demeter. A big highlight is how the reporter is so proud of himself for being a fast runner and being able to keep abreast of the ship as it sailed in through the foggy storm. Also the chapter makes a lot of mention about a rather large dog that sprung from the ship and ran off into the night. We all know that the dog is a shapeshifted Dracula. The reporter, however, continues to bring up the dog and how the SPCA searched for the dog in order to give it a good home. The township that the Demeter ran-aground near wanted to make the dog an official pet of the township. Everyone loves that dog. The dog that is Dracula, making Dracula the most charismatic potential pet in a turn of the century novel.
One last note, in looking up a few things about the film I saw that someone has self published a copy of The Last Voyage of the Demeter on Amazon. It’s just this chapter. In my copy of Dracula it takes 12 pages to get through. Got to love how people choose to use properties in the public domain.
