Whether or not The Last Voyage of the Demeter ends up being the starting to the franchise it clearly wants to kick off, it isn’t exactly a perfect foot to start on. However, this high-seas haunt is kept somewhat afloat by its ensemble of terrific character actors.
The franchise potential shouldn’t be a spoiler or come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel. Demeter is an adaptation of “The Captain’s Log,” an early chapter from the book which describes Dracula’s travel by sea to London from his castle in the Carpathian Mountains. Here, we see it all from the crew’s perspective, as the infamous beastly vampire threatens and torments the ship.
The crew themselves are a convincing bunch of misfits, nicely written and costumed for the period. Our protagonist is Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a doctor whose knowledge and skill proves invaluable as they face this largely unseen foe.
Hawkins is very committed in the role, nearly carrying the entire movie. He would be the single best thing about the film if it wasn’t for Aisling Francoisi as the stowaway Anna and Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth from Game of Thrones) as Elliot, the ship’s captain. Cunningham in particular has a few really stunning moments as Elliot’s mental health spirals downward. David Dastmalchian also gets a few spots to shine as Wojchek, the Demeter’s first mate. I was so glad to see Dastmalchian in an authoritative role like this, since he usually gets typecast as a nebbish and I know from his directing work and other lower-budgeted films that he has tremendous range.
What really lets Demeter down is its pacing and editing. I’m not sure if the filmmakers were scared they’d lose our attention with a period swashbuckler, but it sure feels that way. I’d be surprised if any scene outside of the climax was longer than four minutes. On top of that, within these bite-size scenes, the quick cuts often threaten the same whiplash and light-headedness you’d probably feel after days on a doomed, storm-rattled ship like this one, but not in a good way. We never quite get fully immersed in the story or situations because we’re so quickly whisked away to the next (often very predictable) thing.
There are technical aspects worthy of praise, however. The camerawork by Tom Stern evolves over the film’s runtime, incorporating more Dutch angles and believably emphasizing the rocking of the ship as the characters sink further into despair. As I alluded to previously, the costumes by Carlo Poggioli are quite well-designed. They’re distinct without being flashy, and the distressing is quite believable while never being distracting.
It’s a shame the film never breathes long enough to let us enjoy any of these finer points. It much prefers to whoosh along to the next bland jump-scare or uninteresting kill. Director André Øvredal has a decent handle on the material; anything with this many positives surely had solid leadership at the helm. Somewhere along the way, though, all potential personality the film could have had got sucked out of it, much like blood taken by its monster’s preferred method of murder. | George Napper
