When the first trailer was released for The Last Voyage of the Demeter, the film received some criticism. Even before its release people mocked the idea of Dracula on a boat. These people have never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula because the movie was based on the captain's log that was in fact in the novel. Which the movie directly tells you right at the beginning. But unfortunately most people dismissed this movie out of hand due to their own illiteracy.
Right off the bat the film did a great job of setting up the dangers that the crew was about to face at sea. The seal that was on the cargo that the ship was meant to carry was considered a “bad omen”. The dirt that leaked out of one of the boxes. This is all world building if you don’t know anything about Dracula. And it's an amazing set up if you do know the history of the character.
One of the cargo crates breaks open revealing dirt and a young girl. Which as you may know is a bad omen. Women were not welcome on ships so from the sailors perspective her presence might kill them all. But after our main character performs a blood transfusion on the young woman, Dracula awakens.
I love the design of Dracula himself. He is wrinkled and terrifying. I am so tired of young attractive vampires, that is such a recent phenomenon considering how long vampire lore has been around. Dracula, Nosferatu, and other old power vampires SHOULD be depicted as ugly and scary. I think when you make vampires look like CW stars it really takes away from the fear and the power that they possess.
We don’t actually name drop until 45 minutes into the movie which I think is great because we all knew who our villain was we didn’t need it beaten to death. Of course the sailors are still blaming the woman for the death of the crew members and the animals. The rational members of the crew realize that there is something else, far darker on board.
I think it could have perhaps been a little bit shorter. I think the set up was perfect because you really want to build that tension between the crew and Dracula and the film and the audience. But after the attacks on the crew started, we could have picked up the pace a little bit more. Honestly the movie could have been about an hour and 15 or an hour and a half at most. It really didn’t need to be 2 hours. The attacks were strung out way too long. Now you could make the argument that Dracula likes to play with his food and that's fine but you can easily show that and instill fear without taking that long to tell the story. The other part of it was the captain’s narration from actual book excerpts which was cool. But it also marks a timeline so I guess the writers felt like they had to fill the time properly but you really really don’t
Clocking in at almost exactly 2 hours The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells an untold chapter of Dracula’s story. I think this movie was smart to use something that we haven’t seen before while still staying true to the book. I love seeing new angles taken with vampires in general but specifically with Dracula because there are only so many configurations of an existing story. I don’t think it's a top tier vampire film by any means but that is simply because there are so many. As far as Dracula stories go I would put in the middle tier. I don’t think anything beats The Invitation from last year but I appreciate the creativity of this movie. I’d give it a solid 8/10.
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Alexandrea Callaghan
Certified nerd, super geek and very proud fangirl.
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