voyage of the demeter

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter

2023, Horror, 1h 58m

What to know

Critics Consensus

The Last Voyage of the Demeter finds a fresh angle on Dracula's oft-told tale, although lackluster execution often undercuts the story's claustrophobic tension. Read critic reviews

Audience Says

A solidly scary Dracula movie, The Last Voyage of the Demeter will reward patient viewers with some intense scenes and plenty of eerie atmosphere. Read audience reviews

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Based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the terrifying story of the merchant ship Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo--fifty unmarked wooden crates--from Carpathia to London. Strange events befall the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a merciless presence onboard the ship. When the Demeter finally arrives off the shores of England, it is a charred, derelict wreck. There is no trace of the crew.

Rating: R (Bloody Violence)

Genre: Horror

Original Language: English

Director: André Øvredal

Producer: Bradley J. Fischer , Mike Medavoy , Arnold Messer

Writer: Bragi F. Schut , Stefan Ruzowitzky , Zak Olkewicz

Release Date (Theaters): Aug 11, 2023 wide

Release Date (Streaming): Aug 29, 2023

Box Office (Gross USA): $13.6M

Runtime: 1h 58m

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Production Co: E1 Entertainment, DreamWorks Pictures, Phoenix Pictures, Studio Babelsberg

Sound Mix: Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: Digital 2.39:1

Cast & Crew

Corey Hawkins

Aisling Franciosi

Liam Cunningham

David Dastmalchian

Jon Jon Briones

Stefan Kapicic

Nikolai Nikolaeff

Javier Botet

Woody Norman

Martin Furulund

Chris Walley

André Øvredal

Bragi F. Schut

Screenwriter

Stefan Ruzowitzky

Zak Olkewicz

Bradley J. Fischer

Mike Medavoy

Arnold Messer

Matthew Hirsch

Executive Producer

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As those of you with a decent grasp of horror trivia already know, the Demeter was the ship whose ultimately doomed journey to deliver some especially dangerous cargo from Transylvania to London was chronicled in the seventh chapter of the Bram Stoker classic Dracula . Although this section, running 16 pages in my copy, contains some of the most evocative imagery in that sometimes clumsily written book, the whole episode is not that important to the narrative. It simply illustrates how the title character got from point A to B, and on the rare occasions when filmmakers have chosen to bring this story to the screen, the journey is either reduced to a brief montage or newspaper headline or ignored entirely. Now comes “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” a feature-length expansion of those 16 pages that fully examines the strange occurrences aboard one of the most doomed sea journeys in literary history.

Upon hearing this movie's premise for the first time, I wasn’t entirely convinced it could work. This would be a film where practically every audience member would not only know exactly what the supernatural force at the center of the story is before the Universal logo hits the screen. But they would also—barring some unexpected deviation from the well-known narrative—know exactly how the on-screen events would play out. To me, it looked like just another attempt by Universal to introduce the character that played such a key role in the studio’s history to contemporary audiences following the misfired likes of “Dracula: Untold” and the recent and dreadful “ Renfield .” That may have been the case, but the results are a big step up from those previous stumbles, 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.

Set in 1897, the film opens as the Demeter is about to set sail from Transylvania to London, carrying Captain Eliot ( Liam Cunningham ), loyal first mate Wojchek ( David Dastmalchian ), his grandson Toby ( Woody Norman ), and a small crew that grows even smaller when some of the locals recruited for the journey get skittish when they see that the cargo contains many large crates being sent by an unknown figure to Carfax Abbey in London. Among those recruited at the last second is Clemens ( Corey Hawkins ), who signs on as the ship’s doctor to get passage home to England. His expertise comes in handy when one of the boxes is accidentally opened, and an apparent stowaway ( Aisling Franciosi ) is discovered with a mysterious malady that requires numerous blood transfusions.

Soon, strange things begin happening on the ship. All the livestock on board and Toby’s beloved dog are slaughtered throughout one grisly evening. Sailors begin seeing and hearing odd things at night while on watch, and even the ship’s rats appear to have vanished, leading up to the deathless line, “A boat without rats—such a thing is against nature.” The members of the crew soon begin disappearing, driving the already skittish ones who remain further into paranoia that is not helped when the stowaway, whose name proves to be Anna, finally wakes up and informs Clemens and the others that to steal a line from Mel Brooks , yes, they have Nosferatu. As Dracula ( Javier Botet ) continues snacking through the ship, the rapidly dwindling survivors try to figure out how to stop him before they reach London.

The film was directed by André Øvredal , whose previous credits include such intriguing horror-related efforts as “ Trollhunter ,” “ The Autopsy of Jane Doe ,” and the underrated “ Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark .” This time, he is trying to figure out how to tell a story in which everyone in the audience will be ahead of the characters on the screen at virtually every given point. He accomplishes that primarily by focusing heavily on visual style, creating a moody and haunted atmosphere throughout—even during the scenes set in the daytime—that is both eerily beautiful and just plain eerie. "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" is one of the better-looking horror films to come along in a while. The cat-and-mouse games between Dracula and the crew are staged in a manner that suggests a seafaring variation of “ Alien ,” with Øvredal milking scenes for maximum tension before culminating in some nasty business.

Bear in mind, some of that business is indeed quite nasty—the visualization of Dracula shown here is a particularly grotesque and demonic variation, the scenes of slaughter are definitely gory enough to earn the “R” rating, and not only does the one character you are conditioned to expect to somehow avoid a gruesome demise end up suffering just that, but they also do so more than once. The performances, especially the ones from genre MVP Dastmalchian, Franciosi (so effective in “ The Nightingale ”), and Botet, are all strong and convincing, which helps to raise the emotional stakes to make up for the lack of surprise.

There are two points where the film stumbles a bit. Although the relatively slow and measured pacing employed by Øvredal to generate suspense is mostly effective and preferable to the quick-cut approach others might have taken, a few scenes here run on too long for their own good. Also, the film—Spoiler Alert!—indulges in one of the most irritating elements of contemporary horror cinema, a final scene that exists solely to set up future movies if this one does well at the box office.

And yet, the rest of the movie works enough so that these flaws don’t hurt things too badly. “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” may not be a classic in the annals of Dracula cinema along the lines of the Terence Fisher's Hammer production “Horror of Dracula,” Werner Herzog ’s version of “ Nosferatu the Vampyre ,” or Francis Ford Coppola ’s “Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula.” But it is a smart, well-made, and sometimes downright creepy take on the tale that both horror buffs and regular moviegoers can appreciate in equal measure.

In theaters now.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Film credits.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter movie poster

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

Rated R for bloody violence.

118 minutes

Corey Hawkins as Clemens

Aisling Franciosi as Anna

Liam Cunningham as Captain Eliot

David Dastmalchian as Wojchek

Chris Walley as Abrams

Stefan Kapičić as Olgaren

Martin Furulund as Larsen

Nikolai Nikolaeff as Petrofsky

Woody Norman as Toby

Jon Jon Briones as Cook

Javier Botet as Dracula / Nosferatu

André Øvredal

Writer (based on the chapter "The Captain's Log" of Dracula by)

Bram Stoker

Writer (screen story by)

Bragi F. Schut
Zak Olkewicz
Christian Wagner
Patrick Larsgaard
Julian Clarke

Cinematographer

Bear McCreary

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter Review

Drac’s on a boat and, he’s drinkin’ blood and….

From a handful of pages by Bram Stoker comes The Last Voyage of the Demeter, a moody hunt-and-kill chronicle of Count Dracula’s passage from Transylvania to England. Director André Øvredal expands upon a single chapter in Stoker’s pioneering novel to imagine how its titular vampire fed his hunger at sea. Journal entries about missing crewmen are translated into a rain-soaked nightmare of bad sailor’s luck, torn open necks, and waterlogged isolation that plays to Øvredal’s storytelling strengths. It’s a throwback to broody, Hammer-esque horrors with dread as thick as a fog over the moors, and while the journey isn’t quite fit for a nearly two-hour runtime, there’s still a bloody-good addition to Dracula lore found in the dimly lit decks and cargo hold of the Demeter.

Writers Bragi F. Schut, Stefan Ruzowitzky, and Zak Olkewicz introduce protagonists like Corey Hawkins’ Cambridge graduate Clemens or David Dastmalchian’s gruff and hard-nosed second mate Wojchek, helping us sympathize with characters who are otherwise faceless cannon fodder in the source material. From Liam Cunningham as Captain Eliot – a sympathetic leader making one last haul before retirement – to Aisling Franciosi as the mysterious stowaway Anna, Øvredal’s ensemble feels at home quivering under a doomy, gloomy moonlight, petrified by a gangly figure lurking in the shadows.

Famed creature actor Javier Botet (It, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Mama) brings “The Evil” (as Drac is referred to by his unwitting shipmates) to life in a form that recalls F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot miniseries. Demeter’s Dracula is a vile bloodsucker who begs audiences to cower in his presence. Bat-like features distance this vampire from the dreamy Brad Pitt and Robert Pattinson types, driving home the animalistic nature of Botet’s performance.

The waters churn around the Demeter in a sign of continued distress, tossing the wooden vessel around as a reminder that it’d be a perilous place to be with or without the murderous addition to its manifest. Øvredal channels the Universal Monsters classics of the 20th century whenever lightning bolts illuminate scenes of prolonged dread, drawing fear from the hopelessness of being set adrift with one of horror’s heaviest hitters. Cunningham’s narration is stoic and resigned as spooked seamen fall to fang-gnashing demises each night, but the structure becomes repetitive. The Last Voyage of the Demeter is sea-sickeningly claustrophobic, but sustaining the crew’s paranoia for roughly 110 minutes is an uphill battle. The script stays true to Stoker down to the tiniest speck of cursed Transylvanian soil, and the performances are steeped in survival urgency, yet there are instances where the slow-burn torment needs to be reignited.

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Maybe that’s because The Last Voyage of the Demeter has a set destination with an outcome that can’t be rearranged. Øvredal tells a tale that Stoker confined to punchy entries in a captain’s log, which makes the inevitability of slain galley cooks and skittish lookouts less gripping in a second act that withholds Dracula’s full potential. The introduction of an underage livestock handler attempts to heighten the stakes, and Clemens’ experiences with Victorian-era racism speak to societal monsters, but otherwise, Schut and Olkewicz stick to the predator-prey standards. Familiarity is the film’s friend more often than not, yet it briefly turns foe when the cast tries to generate suspense in scenes with an obvious answer: There’s a vampire on board the Demeter.

There are other minor quibbles, like when computer animation steps in for practical craftsmanship that would look infinitely sharper, but nothing that’s a stake to Last Voyage of the Demeter’s heart. This movie adores being a horror time capsule that gives actors like Dastmalchian and Hawkins opportunities to pay homage to more theatrical genre films that relied on performance to supplement their visual trickery. Øvredal dusts off buried treasures of Old English verbiage and vampire mythology, and while excitement may lay in hiding for longer than hoped, the director unleashes his creature of the night in a way that would make Tod Browning proud.

25 Best Vampire Movies of All Time

Vampires are a cornerstone of horror cinema, arising even before Universal opened Dracula’s coffin in Hollywood’s relative infancy. Since then, we’ve seen vampires of every iteration — the glittery heartthrobs, the ugliest creatures, the prankster roommates, and countless other reinventions.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter should delight horror fans raised on Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and offers an R-rated bite of vampiric brutality for genre fans with a stronger bloodlust. Øvredal does well to transport his cast to a time when scary stories were told around lanterns in the dead of night, and even if the moodiness evaporates due to a protracted runtime and the foregone conclusion of Dracula’s landfall, the director accentuates the basics of violent feeding sessions in hair-raising fashion.