Movie Breakdown: The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

Pre-Screening Stance:

André Øvredal has directed some good movies – The Autopsy Of Jane Doe, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, Troll Hunter – but his last one, 2020’s Mortal, was particularly bad. Maybe The Last Voyage Of The Demeter will get him back on track? I do think this particular Dracula story does have potential to be great.

Post-Screening Ramble:

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is what I would describe as tedious. The story is simply this – there’s a ship sailing from Carpathia to England, Dracula is on it, and he’s pretty murdery and hungry. That’s it. I would love to tell you there’s a nifty twist to be had or a wonderfully taught, slow build to the reveal of the big bad vampire, but there is not. You seem him fairly early in the film, which really kills any element of suspense. This also truncates any chance at getting attached to the crew, so you never care about any of them as they’re getting their necks ripped open. Another element that hurts this film is every single character’s extremely poor and unbelievable choices. These people do absolutely nothing during the day – when Dracula is clearly not active – to help themselves, and even though they’re on a ship that has but one cargo hold, they pay no mind to the clearly marked crate – that they were also warned about before setting sail – that’s the cause of their troubles. To say the least, it’s frustrating to watch, and when you toss this nonsensical silliness in with an unfortunate lack of anything else that’s compelling or entertaining, you end up with a film that just drags on forever. It’s too bad, really, because it looks nice and the performances are generally fine. Oh well. The Last Voyage Of The Demeter hits theaters this Friday, August 11.

One Last Thought:

Every now and again Corey Hawkins’s English accent slips into the realm of parody and it’s pretty much the only fun thing that happens in this movie.

One More Last Thought:

This film should have been shot in black and white.