The Last Voyage Of The Demeter feels immediately like the type of movie we don’t really get anymore. A period feature
film based on a chapter from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Clearly appealing to the old school monster movie fan. Throughout its two hour run time we are lashed with rain and flashed with lightning as the titular Russian schooner makes its way from Bulgaria to the wind swept shores of England. The period is beautifully realized on screen and the design of the film is quite impressive at points. The cast all do a fine job headed up by Corey Hawkins as Clemens who is awarded a place on the vessel after saving the life of the Captains (Liam Cunnigham) grandson played by Woody Norman. First officer Wojchek (the always reliable David Dastmalchian) is suspicious of Clemens bringing tension immediately to the table before the voyage has even begun.
What starts off as a genuinely exciting opening soon turns into a paint by numbers exercise as the crew of the Demeter are picked off one by one by the mysterious beast that is stalking them. Reviving a blood drained stowaway Anna (Aisling Franciosi) the crew are given a bit more information on what is dispatching them but even this is unable to save them from the fangs of the monster. Director André Øvredal (The Autopsy of Jane Doe) clearly knows how to make horror movies but Voyage tends to fall a little flat. There definitely feels that there could be moments of greatness, if the film was able to breathe just a little more instead of attempting to offer up predictable jump scares. The tension is just never really present and considering the fate of the crew is explained within the first five minutes it is difficult to muster up any sort of care for the doomed characters.
This Last Voyage has actually been realized before as a radio play and in the second episode of the BBC’s recent reimagining of Stokers tale. Dracula himself played by Javier Botet is by and large quite unmemorable and even in the closing moments of the film when we expect to see him in a more human form he still looks over done and just not a very believable rendering of the Count, making him more rodent like in appearance. The Last Voyage of The Demeter does what it does just fine but fails in offering something new that we have never seen before.