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The Last Voyage of the Demeter Movie Review

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a 2023 supernatural horror film directed by Andre Ovredal and starring Corey Hawkins and Aisling Franciosi. It’s an uneven, but quite solid genre flick.

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“A boat without rats – such a thing is against nature“

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The crew of the merchant ship Demeter attempts to survive the ocean voyage from Carpathia to London as they are stalked each night by a merciless presence onboard the ship. This movie is based on just one chapter from the ‘Dracula’ novel, which instantly made this proposition an intriguing one. Taking just one moment in the story and making a full-blown feature film story out of it was a sound idea, and although the execution was uneven, it still remained a very engaging and underappreciated horror flick.

If an otherworldly creature stalking an unsuspecting crew in a confined location sounds familiar, it’s because it is. This movie is pretty much ‘Alien’, but on a ship instead of a spaceship. The execution of the plot is also mostly rather straightforward and holding no particular surprises and/or twists, but sometimes it’s nice to have a lean little genre flick that is very well executed despite being familiar.

Corey Hawkins as Clemens was quite good and memorable. The same goes for Aisling Franciosi in the main female role. The two are basically the protagonists of this movie while others just come and go. It was nice seeing Serbian actor Stefan Kapicic of ‘Deadpool 2’ fame in such a prolonged role. The black and female characters surviving the longest definitely reminded me of ‘The Nightingale’ with the actress herself appearing in both movies, but thankfully the commentary about race was taken to the minimum here.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is at its best when it’s being hopelessly dark because this is a movie that takes no punches. Many people die the most horrific deaths and even dogs and children aren’t spared from that faith. Another highlight are the visuals as the creature design is strong and Dracula himself was at his most animalistic and savage in this movie.

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The cinematography, production design and score are all surprisingly confident, though the dialogue and characterization left a lot to be desired. The ending served as a great prequel and origin story for Dracula and it’s a shame that the movie bombed so hard as it could have led to a solid franchise in and of itself.