The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
Last Watch Date - August 23, 2026
Total Times Watched - Once
Comments
I've wanted to see this movie since before it was in theaters and never got around to it. I thought of going to see it in the theater at the time but YOU KNOW I hate going to the theater. Then I got it shortly after it came out on blu ray. It has sat on my Plex server ever since...
To be honest, part of what drove me away from this movie was that 2 hour runtime. The chunk of the book that this is based on is quite short, so how can you stretch THAT into 2 hours? When you get down to it, the movie has almost 9 minutes of credits, so I guess you can say it's about 1:50, which is still too long. Nevertheless, this movie has a few things I do love: Dracula, ships, oceans.
First up I want to complain a bit. Why did they have to have the tropey song-and-dance crew scene? I'm sure it was relatively common for people to sing and dance and play accordions on ships, but I don't need to see it in EVERY SINGLE MOVIE from this era. It feels so overdone and it kind of takes me out of it at this point. Cheap storytelling or scene-setting maybe. And really I'm not sure it is that historic but I don't feel like looking it up right now. Either way, kind of stupid.
ANOTHER COMPLAINT is the atrocious CGI. The ship and background look AWFUL in a ton of this movie. Don't get me started on the Dracula .. monster? entity? bat-man? That is, by far, my biggest disappointment in this movie. The textures and lighting make it look like a 1990s DVD-ROM rendered cut scene. They basically made the Resident Evil 1 guy mixed with a low-rent Gollum and said "hey look it's Dracula!" NOT MY DRACULA!!!
Enough about that, let's get on to the good bits. The actors are pretty good all around. I think MAYBE if you had to single out a not-as-good performance, you could pick Anna (Aisling Franciosi). I mean, she was .. fine I suppose but by far the weakest performer. Liam Cunningham AKA Ser Davos was excellent as usual. I'm unfamiliar with Corey Hawkins' other work, but I liked him as the main character in this. The rest of the crew was largely disposable and, well, they were disposed of. That's not a spoiler because if you haven't read Dracula by now, I don't know what to tell you.
In terms of creepiness and potential scare factor, I think this movie did a fair job. I liked the resurrection of the crew member into a vampire. Slow, plodding, almost like a zombie! The way he attacked the child was excellent. And speaking of the child.. well, without going into details, I like how they treated him in this.
In general, the framing and photography aspect of this movie is good. I really think they botched it by not using more practical effects though. And I know I complained about runtime, but this movie did pop on by pretty quickly. I can't complain! HUEHUEHUEHUE
Given all of this, did it live up to my own internal hype?! Was it the Dracula movie I've always wanted and needed?! Eh, no. It did not and it was not. But that's ok!
Recommended?
Tough to say. If you like/love Dracula, sure. Otherwise, there are probably better ocean-ship movies.