Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
When a ghostly derelict ship washes up on the shores of England, the captain’s log recovered from the wreck reveals a blood-curdling story of what happened to the missing crew. Based on a section of Bram Stoker’s classic gothic novel “Dracula,” the 2023 historical horror film “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” focuses on the doomed crew traveling from Carpethia to England. Unbeknownst to the Demeter’s crew, an ancient demon sleeps in their cargo, waiting for the night to devour them.
Directed by André Øvredal, “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” is set during 1897 and is quite fantastic when it comes to its dark, ominous gothic settings. However, the film falters with its most crucial element – Dracula himself. The character design for the creature is supposed to be akin to the iconic Nosferatu (Count Orlok), from the 1922 classic horror movie. But for most modern viewers who haven’t seen Nosferatu, the Dracula onboard the Demeter looks like a demented blend of Dobby from the Harry Potter movies and the Gollum from “Lord of the Rings”. And the creators make the mistake of doing his face reveal too early in the runtime, watering down the scares in the story.
Corey Hawkins plays primary protagonist Clemens, a doctor who wounds up on the Demeter as he is looking to get back to London. Liam Cunningham portrays the elderly Captain Eliot, who records his crew’s nightmarish ordeal in battling the Dracula, to serve as a warning for others. With a two-hour runtime, this horror film soon begins to get tedious due to its heavy dialogues and mundane characters. The Cambridge educated Clemens is new to the crew and thus everybody except for the Captain and the Captain’s grand-kid is hostile towards him. The hostility is twofold due to the racial differences between them. Since most of the crew is poor and uneducated, it’s hard to get feel anything about their problematic behavior or coarse language or even their superstitious beliefs. And there lies the biggest problem with “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” – the characters aren’t relatable at all and generic. Dracula could mince them to pieces and viewers might not bat an eyelid. Although I definitely flinched at one scene where Dracula rips off a human’s throat.
Since the writers have obviously taken creative liberties with the story and added their own characters to the mix, one wonders why they did not make the plot more complex or grander in scale. Because the sets are great, the special effects with the stormy sea and ship are also very good. In fact, even Dracula’s exaggerated monster-like visage is not all that bad, but the ragtag band of ruffian crew members mumbling inane stuff just doesn’t make for a compelling watch. The only two intellectual people on the Demeter are Clemens, who is far too serious and uptight, and then there’s Captain Eliot, who is always holed up in his room.
Aisling Franciosi portrays Anna, the only woman on the ship, whose unconscious body is discovered by the crew many days after they set sail and they all mistake her for a stowaway. However, when Anna comes to her senses, she raves like a madwoman and says “he is here! he is here! We have to get off this boat” and NOT ONE PERSON bothers to ask her what she is talking about. Okay, well, Clemens does eventually ask her what she was going on about, but nobody else is in the least bit curious after and it’s frustrating to see the lack of questions, because they are all on a ship were all the animals have been brutally killed and two crew members have also lost their lives. To make things worse, even after the crew realizes an evil vampire-like creature of the night is on their ship, killing them one by one, they decide to fight him during the night! Seriously? The bad decisions of the characters’ can cause frustration among viewers.
Instead of stretching out the story over days, it should’ve been a tense “humans vs demon” tale unfolding in a span of 12 hours. Overall, “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” does have some good horror moments, but it gets uninteresting very quickly. It’s a crying shame, because the cinematography is top notch.
Rating: 5 on 10.
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