Review of: The Last Voyage of the Demeter

As a huge fan of classic and British horror, I went in fully expecting to enjoy this, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Director Andre Ovredal (The Autopsy of Jane Doe) was asked how to describe this, and he simply said, “basically Alien on a ship in 1897”. I can’t disagree with this assessment, but there are a lot of other feelings and tones with this as well. The pacing is that of the classic Hammer films and by extension the classic Universal Monster movies, with lots of tension building and atmosphere.

There is a gothic horror feeling and foreboding sense of dread, but there are also elements of more serious takes on Dracula and the dragon beast from over the years. Near Dark, 30 Days of Night, Nosferatu, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, of course, but the Alien reference keeps close to the idea of a smart, savage beast that just casually plays with its prey—a grotesque take on the creature and not at all the man.

A ship, The Demeter, has its cargo dropped off on the dock, and its cost of the journey is paid in full plus extra as the townsfolk from the Carpathian mountains know they are relieving themselves of their treacherous burden. While also dealing with the fact that they know they are sending their cargo to damn an entire other country.

Our Captain, played by Game of Thrones alum Liam Cunningham, and his first mate, played by the spectacularly eccentric character actor David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad, Dune) must assemble some new crew from the local dock hands. This opens us to Corey Hawkins’ ( Straight Out Of Compton) character coming on board. Clemens, Hawkins, is up for the task as the ship’s new medic and has the skills needed to work on the deck.

Slowly, one at a time, the crew is picked apart and fed upon. Our secret passenger doesn’t just kill his victims, though. He feeds from them just enough to stave off hunger. As it is later revealed, he is rationing them. We have some different takes on the turning of the bitten. They don’t necessarily completely turn, especially since they are still humans. They are just being used as cattle to feed.

As the body count builds, our survivors struggle to find where and what is doing this on the boat until they all come to the agreement that, implausible as it seems, something is hunting them. Human or animal, they don’t know.

The burn is absolutely slow, but this didn’t affect me being sucked into the atmospheric universe we are presented with. We know what is happening, but instead of cheap jump scares, we see the full realizations as characters come face to face with what is hunting them. A being never heard of nor seen before.

There was one scene in particular when The silhouette of Dracula was behind one of our crew as he lit a candle on the boat deck. Lightning flashes, and we see him in a quick glimpse, and then he is gone. The light flash is so bright that even after Dracula is gone for a second, I blink, and when I look up at the screen, he is still there in the effect of my eye, but he isn’t on the screen anymore like a flash burn-in on my retina. It was creepy, eerie, and that should be the full idea of the film. We have seen much of this before, but it is well done. There is enough gore. Maybe not for the most extreme of gore hounds, but enough.

This film isn’t for those with short attention spans or needing constant gore, violence, and jump scares. All of that is here, but it is long, drawn out, and only enhances the film for those who like a slow burn. Even though we know the voyage ends, the journey makes for a well-executed and tight horror thriller. It is a film I expect to watch again as the years go on. More than just another Dracula story, this is an intense and well-constructed take on a familiar subject matter and a fascinating character study of those felled by the creature we know and love.