Our take
It’s a pretty nifty idea to expand on just one section of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that’s essentially just a footnote but implies something much more violent and horrific. And to its credit, The Last Voyage of the Demeter takes this sliver of the source material very seriously—with strong, period-specific production design and a cast that brings humanity and morality to their otherwise two-dimensional characters. Unfortunately, the film just doesn’t know what to do with itself. As a creature feature, the thrills are uninspired and difficult to see properly on screen; as a supposedly character-driven horror movie, it only ever gestures toward deeper ideas but fails to give the tragic nature of its story any weight. And Dracula himself has none of the terror or the sophistication that has made him such an enduring figure throughout all of fiction. He’s just a thing with wings.
The story
The crew of the merchant ship Demeter attempts to survive the ocean voyage from Carpathia to London as they are stalked each night by a merciless presence onboard the ship.
Elsewhere
"What truly distinguishes Last Voyage of the Demeter, beyond its thick atmosphere of dread, is its gleeful cruelty, the delicious mean streak with which it sets up its suspense set pieces and its kills."
— Bilge Ebiri
"An often striking take on the tale that makes up for what it lacks in surprise with a lot of style and some undeniably effective scare moments."
— Peter Sobczynski
While sailing to London, the crew of a merchant ship are stalked by a bloodthirsty creature that found its way on board.
Perhaps in other hands, this movie would have fared better and would have been able to become a worthwhile survival story in its own right. (Think Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but for gothic fiction.) Because the cast really does give this script their all, with confident turns from the likes of Corey Hawkins, Liam Cunningham, and the rest of the Demeter crew. But perhaps most impressive—and once again showing his range as a character actor—is David Dastmalchian, speaking in an accent that makes him sound unrecognizable from his previous work, but retaining that same desperation that marks his most memorable characters.
Having Jon Jon Briones play a devoutly religious cook who does NOT want to stick around to fight the supernatural being is the strongest Filipino representation I've ever seen in a Hollywood film.
The details
Streaming arrival
Who picked it
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.
