- Starring
- Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham
- Director
- André Øvredal
- Rating
- R
- Genre
- Horror
- Release date
- August 11, 2023
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
Dracula was first published in May 1897. Since then, Bram Stoker’s macabre magnum opus has been spun off into more than 200 films and dozens of parodies and inspired an entire horror fiction subgenre spanning thousands of books, movies, video games, and even tabletop RPGs.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
In the original novel, the cargo ship Demeter is found empty and adrift in Whitby Harbor, with only the captain’s log to give any clue as to the fate of its crew. Taking place almost exclusively onboard during Dracula’s infamous journey from Wallachian to England, we get to see the details of that fateful and bloody cruise in The Last Voyage of the Demeter.
Demeter has several things going for it. The actors are all solid, and the aesthetic is excellent, with a ship set that feels wholly authentic and an almost vignette visual style that borrows heavily from silent films such as Nosferatu, giving the movie a sense of age and perpetual darkness without sacrificing fidelity. This is easily its greatest strength. However, beyond serviceable dialogue delivered by actors who are better than the material, there aren’t many more accolades to be showered upon this film.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter isn’t a terrible movie. However, its greatest weakness is also its plot hook. Even if you are unfamiliar with the original Dracula, this film goes out of its way to make certain the audience knows that all hands are lost by the story’s end. The challenge this creates in generating an emotional investment in any of the characters or their well-being from the audience cannot be overstated.
The characters aboard the ship do little to aid in engendering empathy. With one exception (see the Woke Elements), not a single one of the crew stands out as particularly likable or worthy of loathing, overly interesting, or even noticeably distinguishable from one another. So, their deaths at the hands of Dracula end up being more like plowing into a group of nameless and faceless NPCs in a Grand Theft Auto game, just a thing that everyone expected to happen.
Were the deaths particularly gory or creative (let alone unexpected), or the camera work and music marginally interesting, perhaps the film would be more able to evoke some emotional connection. Unfortunately, The Last Voyage of the Demeter spends its nearly two-hour runtime persistently under the misconception that it’s a horror-thriller when, in fact, knowing that everyone is going to die lends itself much more naturally to a hack-and-slash gore-fest. The results are telegraphed and unremarkable jumpscares and the most modest gore seen in a Dracula film since Hotel Transylvania. Truly, this film nearly could have been rated PG-13.
Additionally, the film’s pacing is a bit of a mess. At 1h and 58m, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is nearly 40 minutes too long. Nearly everything that is needed to be known to set the stage is handled in the opening text overlay and a brief prologue. However, the film continues with redundant, unnatural, and overlong character intros as well as completely superfluous world-building efforts (as though everyone in the real world isn’t at least passingly familiar with Dracula). Moreover, the amount of needed information conveyed could (and did) fit within its five-minute third retelling that took place after all of the main characters were aboard the ship.
On top of that, between horrors when day breaks, everything comes to a screeching halt with scenes brimming with bloated exposition. Yet, the filmmakers felt that it was a good idea to ham-fist in an additional character at the midway point in an effort to fill up more runtime instead of admitting to themselves that their plot is thinner than a Hunter Biden excuse, and just opening up the jugular and pouring out another gallon of corn syrup and red food coloring.
Furthermore, what plot there is, relies on characters (whose intelligence seemingly runs from average to far above average) either behaving stupidly or making giant and completely unearned leaps in logic to sus out the situation, and that’s when a new magic yet completely ineffectual MacGuffin isn’t being introduced. These problems are only compounded by the film’s resolution, which is by far one of the stupidest plans ever crafted by a group of horror movie victims. They might as well have all had sex, done drugs, and said, “we’ll be right back.”
Finally, with a budget of only $45 million, it can almost be forgiven that the creature design for Dracula looks like a cross between Gollum and the bat gremlin from Gremlin’s 2. Almost. With a little more practical makeup, a little less digital, and a lot more creativity (think Jaws), Dracula could have been frightening. Unfortunately, despite the filmmakers’ best efforts to hide the cheap plastic-looking computer-generated gargoyle they created behind copious amounts of rain and darkness, the creature never appeared real for a moment.
When the sun comes out and the neck wounds scab over, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a small story best viewed on a small screen, streaming it at home rather than spending $20 per ticket at the theater.
WOKE ELEMENTS
- By his own admission, Corey Hawkin’s Clemens was in the movie because it’s “important especially in the horror genre because we’re not always centered in that way.”
- Hawkins, who is best known for his work on the hit horror TV show, The Walking Dead, must never have heard of:
- Get Out
- Candyman
- I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
- Blade
- Gothika
- The Shining
- Deep Blue Sea
- Jaws 3
- The motivation for his casting notwithstanding, the filmmakers make certain to let us know that the reason that his character is on the ship in the first place is thanks to rrrrrrracism. It’s one moment and it’s completely irrelevant, but it’s there.
- Hawkins, who is best known for his work on the hit horror TV show, The Walking Dead, must never have heard of:
- The Demeter is a Russian ship that hauls cargo through the Mediterranean Sea, yet its cook is a Phillapino who happens to be a devout Christian. It smacks of DEI casting.
- The only devout or even openly Christian character, the cook, is also a judgmental and unyielding cowardly bigot who tries to force his beliefs on others.
- Unlike the source material, the crucifix is completely and inexplicably ineffective against Dracula.
- The protagonist is a “man of science” and, therefore, an atheist.
- The character of Anna is so unnecessary and forced that you can practically hear some blue-haired lesbian writer screeching her complaint that the screenplay had no women in it. However, at least Anna is relatively pleasant and kind and never tries to take over.
- While the main character has “never liked guns,” Anna is Rambo.
- She is always right and reasonable.
- Even though she’s not much more than a peasant milkmaid who was raised to fear Dracula from the moment that she could walk, she’s almost always cool and collected and able to rationalize a situation, coming up with an appropriate response or course of action.
- She often and unnaturally interjects herself in the middle of conversations in a way that no uneducated 19th-century backwoods country girl would do.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
25 comments
Austin
August 15, 2023 at 12:51 pm
From the behind-the-scene clips, it seems Dracula was actually largely practical!
I really enjoyed, aside from the main character’s random telling of his woes with racism. It just comes out of nowhere when *SPOILERS* they’re planning their big trap for Dracula. Like, don’t you have other things on your mind right now?
I also noticed and didn’t like the crucifix not doing anything. Somehow in this world Dracula can exist, but Christ cannot? Lame.
James Carrick
August 15, 2023 at 4:01 pm
Yeah, I saw some of the behind the scenes stuff, which makes it even more mystifying that Drac looked so fake.
As far as the planned trap. ***MAJOR SPOILERS*** It’s one of the dumbest horror film plans ever. If they plan on scuttling the ship and leaving it anyway… and they’ve already established that Drac only comes out at night, why would anyone wait until night to do it? For all intents and purposes, he’s already trapped on the ship. Set fire to it or bust a hole in it (or both) in the middle of the day when the monster is sleeping and take off. It’s so obvious that it hurts me to think about it.
Austin
August 15, 2023 at 4:29 pm
Yeah, I was telling my wife on the way home that they were pretty dumb, and had they realized a little earlier that SOMETHING WAS OFF, they could have just busted a hole in the grating above his crate and then opened the crate up. But your idea makes sense too; just leave as the sun rises and burn down the ship!
Chuck Sneed
August 15, 2023 at 6:16 pm
I’m so tired of this woke stuffs… Why can’t we have a vampire film with just legacy Americans rather than these woke casting
Gail
August 16, 2023 at 2:07 pm
A multi-racial, multinational crew is actually not unhistorical (for Europe, anyway. I don’t know about Russia!). Sounds as if they didn’t give the black actor any actual HISTORICAL reasons to be there, though. Just the only reason Hollywood will accept now.
Manolo Varela
February 16, 2024 at 8:24 am
Russians are considered European.
Witchfinder General
August 22, 2023 at 8:55 am
What a shame, I was really looking forward to seeing this movie, but how it’s a Hard Pass.
Austin
August 22, 2023 at 2:00 pm
I’d give it a 6.5-7.5. Despite the plot holes, the lack of respect for Dracula’s repulsion to Christ, and the diversity hiring, I still really enjoyed this movie, and I do hope it gets a sequel! I thought the music, ambiance, cinematography, and set design were all spectacular! I thought all the actors were good to great. With a more intelligent script that didn’t have something against religion, this could be a wonderful series, IMO. The world is there. Now they just need a script that takes advantage of it.
*SPOILERS*
One thing I can say is that I think they did an excellent job of making their “creature”
Dracula come together when he’s dressed up at the end. It’s like his face was designed in a way that could look very beastly, and yet in clothes look like a more stereotypical Dracula. I thought that was brilliant!
James
August 22, 2023 at 3:33 pm
I can’t believe no one else picked up on how anachronistic the main character’s hair style is.
It isn’t that difficult to find photographs of actual black physicians from roughly that same time period.
For instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McCune_Smith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Hale_Williams
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Carter_Fuller
They all look and dress like other upper class professional men from that time period.
Compare their appearance to the way Corey Hawkins looks in the image at the top of this page! It’s ridiculous. Oh well, I guess it could have been worse. At least Hawkins didn’t insist on something even more anachronistic for the character, like corn rows or dreads.
James Carrick
August 22, 2023 at 4:18 pm
I would only argue that his character had been down on his luck for some time. Those styles take time, money, and product to reproduce.
The Count
August 22, 2023 at 4:30 pm
Just watched it. Overall enjoyed the movie. But I do think it’s hilarious that the only person who survives is the black guy, and he’s also the only one with education out of the entire crew. Everyone else (white guys) are portrayed as morons. The woke factor is off the charts with that aspect, but I still enjoyed the visuals and seeing Dracula. My one complaint with the production quality is the loud, screeching music. This is a bad trend in Hollywood over the last 20 years. We don’t need ear-splitting music.
Jay
September 1, 2023 at 3:07 pm
I agree. The movie was not too bad overall. It was visually pleasing and I like the atmosphere of being on the ship. However, it didn’t earn a place in my non-woke Plex collection because of it’s “all white men are worthless” underlying message. It’s very similar to the movie Becky where every white man is either bad Nazi’s or the only good white man is weak and get’s killed off. If it wasn’t for the underlying “white man bad” message it would have been a great movie.
James
August 22, 2023 at 4:57 pm
Fair enough. That’s what I get for commenting without knowing the character’s back story.
Deliliah
September 6, 2023 at 7:20 pm
Non Wokeness is 80+ %… this movie is woke af. Hell, its wokeness description stands on its own. Ide really like to know how this sight scores that. This move has a woke score of 50% at best. At BEST. Just more woke crap for the iggy pile.
James Carrick
September 7, 2023 at 12:30 am
Thanks for the feedback.
We have a point system in which we’ll chip away at the Non-Wokeness score for each infraction and then weight each infraction based on how pervasive it is to the overall narrative. That said, one of the main reasons that we include a list of all of the Woke Elements is so that each of our readers can best decide for themselves what they can and cannot stomach.
Larion233
April 6, 2024 at 8:05 pm
And so how did this score only 20% woke?
– Anti-Christian/religion, with the only christian being a nutcase & a coward.
– Black Cambridge educated doctor in 1890s (unlikely if not absurd, there were only a couple, moreover this doctor describes his own father as a deckhand on a ship, not exactly an esteemed position that would propel his son into a good education.
– He mentions his blackness several times and implies that racism has dogged him his entire life. He says the only reason he was in Romania was because he’d been rejected as a physician by many people until some bigwig in Romania found his credentials impressive, only to fire him because he was black upon arriving there. This is the entire premise behind his whole “I want the world to make sense” thing – it’s all about him subtly implying things don’t make sense because he’s educated and super smart but people are racist against him.
– Woman shows up and outclasses all of the men. She also somehow gets bitten like a dozen times by Dracula and doesn’t turn (initially at least), unlike the kid and that one sailor who both turn immediately and lose their minds. She also keeps her sanity even when she’s turned, unlike them. The power of being a WAMEN! Hell she doesn’t even scream when she burns to death, unlike those weak white men!
– Black guy and woman are the only ones to survive the ship sinking (and then only black guy)
– All of the white crew are unbelievably incompetent bumbling idiots for most of the story. Black guy doctor + peasant woman are the ONLY ones who even HIT Dracula at any point in the movie, and they almost kill him. Every other crew member, trained sailors who are familiar with guns, never so much as scratch their enemy. This is the classic “white man bad/useless/stupid” rhetoric common to all woke crap.
James Carrick
April 6, 2024 at 8:11 pm
I don’t think you’re wrong. This was fairly early in the site’s existence, while I was still figuring out the system. Were I to rate it now, it would have been a lower score. One day, when I have time, I’ll rewatch some of these early programs and redo them.
As it stands, I’ll leave the comments open and fine folks like yourself can help me to steer audiences in the right direction.
AC
October 7, 2023 at 1:52 pm
Thank GOD I am not the only one who caught onto the “woke” crap in this film. The judgmental Christian, the poor black man who was subjected to racism, the woman who is always right and reasonable and somehow educated/smart in her own right even though she grew up poor! The ONLY thing I enjoyed with this film was when Dracula dressed up as a man toward the end of the film. And I’m tired of the plight of the black male always being the ONLY survivor in these films. It was boring and predictable and if you realize a vampire is on your ship, why not “jump ship” DURING THE DAY?!?!??!?!??!
Alex
October 9, 2023 at 4:56 pm
Yeah it’s woke. But not like I expected anything else. You see a black guy on TV these days, you start counting until he talks about racism. It’s so tiresome. They made King Carol of Romania racist out of the blue. Also the girl, the one who is supposed to be some village girl that lived isolated from the rest of the world sure spoke some damned good English, but ok. Maybe. What’s stupid is how she suddenly knows how to operate a Winchester rifle that probably didn’t even exist in that part of the world.
But the most disappointing thing of all was the final survivor. Aside the fact that it defeated the purpose of the whole story, you know a doomed voyage with no survivors, it also ends up being insulting cause the survivor cannot really tell his story cause of racism.
Another waste of time. I should have wiped my ass with the money I paid for that ticket. Would have been more satisfying.
Malevolent
December 13, 2023 at 4:47 am
Don’t forget that the two who make it at the end on a ship full of white guys are the token black man and girl boss on the ship.
PPCornothing
February 15, 2024 at 4:55 am
Another huge disappointment after much anticipation. As soon as I realized that the black character was front and center, my hopes were dashed. Woke garbage again. Then as expected comes the girl power character, the sissy boy(or was it a girl?), the cook role had to go to an Asian just to check that box. The biggest flaw with this film is that Dracula is portrayed as a gargoyle puppet, no character development, no interesting dialogue whatsoever. This movie came off as a hack job woke rendition of a classic horror tale. Woke crap and I would honestly be ashamed of being involved in its production.