Content Advisory: Animal cruelty or animal death, Excessive or gratuitous violence
A doomed ship carries deadly cargo in The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Clemens (Corey Hawkins) is a British doctor stranded in Romania, who secures passage aboard the Detetmer helmed by Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) and his first mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian). Part of the Demeter’s cargo on its voyage to London is fifty unmarked wooden crates, one of which is soon discovered to be carrying the unwitting stowaway Anna (Aisling Franciosi), who is suffering from a horrible illness. However, during the lengthy voyage across the sea, it is soon discovered that there is another stowaway on board, in the form of the beastly Dracula (Javier Botet).
The Last Voyage of the Demeter Synopsis
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a horror film directed by André Øvredal (Troll Hunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark), which is loosely based upon the chapter “The Captain’s Log” from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Taking place nearly entirely aboard the titular ship, the film is led by Corey Hawkins (The Tragedy of Macbeth) as British expatriate Clemons, who joins the crew of the Demeter to get back home. Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) and David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad, Late Night with the Devil) costars as Captain Eliot, joined by his young grandson Toby (Woody Norman), and first mate Wojchek, respectively.
When Anna, played by Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale, Game of Thrones), is discovered in the cargo hold on the first night, it raises the concern of the superstitious crew, who consider it bad luck to have a woman on board. These fears seem justified when all the animals on the ship are brutally killed. However, when the crew members start getting killed one by one, it becomes obvious that there is something quite evil on board with them.
My Thoughts on The Last Voyage of the Demeter
Those who read Bram Stoker’s original 1897 novel Dracula would know that instead of having a traditional narrative form, the story is made up of personal journals, artifacts, diaries, and historical ephemera. Indeed, the story of the Last Voyage of the Demeter is chronicled in the seventh chapter of the novel, as part of an excerpt from The Dailygraph newspaper.
As there have been countless big-screen adaptations of Dracula, including earlier this year with Renfield, it is an interesting decision for André Øvredal and writers Bragi F. Schut (Escape Room) and Zak Olkewicz (Fear Street: Part Two – 1978, Bullet Train) to produce an entire film based on only a single chapter of the novel. One of the few previous Dracula adaptations to feature the Demeter sequence is F.W. Murnau Nosferatu from 1922, which is a clear visual inspiration for the look of Dracula in The Last Voyage of the Demeter, as played by Spanish creature actor Javier Botet (The Conjuring 2).
As André Øvredal proved himself quite capable at building scares and tension with The Autopsy of Jane Doe, it is almost a disappointment that The Last Voyage of the Demeter isn’t a scarier film, opting to depict Dracula as a bat-like monster that jumps out and bites giant holes into the necks of the Demeter’s crew. The film also has a couple of sequences where survivors turn into vampire zombies, which is never fully explained.
However, for a film based upon a single chapter of a novel, where you know how it’s all going to turn out based solely on the title, The Last Voyage of the Demeter ends up being a solid horror film and probably one of the better modern depictions of Dracula. That said, the film is still a bit of a wasted opportunity in some ways and the film’s ending is a bit too on the nose.
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