The Last Voyage of the Demeter

To have fleshed out some very sparse diary entries into a full movie is a decent enough turn. Good cast, however they have a very limited gambit to run, less than a short storys worth of source material with zero ability for true character development. More a concept with arms and legs at a push. Its neatly done, the scripts a bit rough and ready but by no means is this the worst vampire movie to reach the big screen in the last two or three years. Less CGI would have been great as Javier botet is up there with doug jones in terms of his abilites on the physical acting front. Also not sure about the anna character , think the film would have been better without that as a framing device they could have gone more into the realms of john carpenters the thing , having that kind of suspense - all in all worth a watch.

I am a huge Dracula fan. To this day, it is still one of my favorite books, one which I've read again and again. So when I saw they were doing a movie based on the Demeter voyage chapter, I was very excited. However this movie just didn't do it for me.

One of the biggest complaints is the run time. It's 2 hours long and you can really feel it. It starts off strong with a solid opening, then doing a decent job building the suspense of the hidden terror lurking in the bowels of the ship. However, instead of ramping things up once we see Dracula, it instead drags it's feet to hit that long runtime. Likewise, the more we see of Dracula, the more the cgi effects look noticeably bad.

My other big complaint is that the movie takes a lot of creative liberty. Tbf in the book, all we really get is a brief captains log, which the movie does quote. But it's obvious the film's writers played the game "well the author didn't say this person wasn't there, so that means we can add them". For instance, the book never says they found a stowaway, but it "also didn't say they didn't find a stowaway " so let's add one, make her a female, and make her to be the only one with knowledge about Dracula while all the men are angry and dumb. The book never said there was child, but it "also never said there wasn't one" so let's add a kid because nothing ruins a horror movie's stakes like a having a kid since you know Hollywood would never approve of killing him off. The book never said they had a random black guy on board who happened to be a secret doctor and knows all about blood transfusion, but it "also never explicitly said this man wasn't there" so let's make him our main character, not the Captain of the titular ship who's log this whole movie is supposed to be based off of.

If you haven't read the books, this stuff probably won't bother you. But if you have read the books, you'll be disappointed the movie's writers played this stupid game to insert modern societal problems into an 1800s Russian shipping voyage. The big problem for me is the more time they devote run time to this trivial messaging about societal problems, the less time they devote to showing the horror and propelling the story, which is the whole point of a horror movie.

Cut this stuff out, the movie is noticeably shorter and has a much better flow. And this isn't a gripe on any of the actors, they all play the roles surprisingly well especially for a horror movie.

Rogue One is based on a small snippet of a larger story, but managed to expand that small snippet into a fun adventure. This movie does the same thing, but with an R rating. It takes a chapter out of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and turns it into a summer, thriller/suspense movie. I enjoyed this movie for what it was, I would recommend it as a good time.

This is a decent, popcorn summer film. If you go in expecting more or less, you will be disappointed. I went in with low expectations as the movie was not doing well critically. Some critics were lamenting it adds nothing new to the dracula mythos, it doesn't subvert expectations, it doesn't reinvent the wheel. C'mon guys, not every movie needs to be an Oscar contender, can't we just have some fun with Dracula? Critics were too harsh on this movie and are slamming it for what it isn't rather than commenting on what it is. It's a solid 7/10 movie.

We've gotten two theatrically released Dracula films this year. Truly we are living in good times.

I was extremely excited for this movie. A gothic horror film on a ship? A golden premise. And, delivers on its premise more often than not.

The film has glowing, gorgeous cinematography, a haunting musical score, and is acted to perfection, with even the child performance being quite good. And I was even more impressed with the production design. The ship creaks and becomes a character unto itself, with eeriness lurking in the shadows.

The writing is mixed, though. The script does make great use of the small location and has sufficient thematic depth and a few strong character beats. But unfortunately it's also bogged down with a lot of empty characters and too many scenes of meandering, repetitive conversation.

And even with the great visual craft on display, I found the scares particularly weak. Not a single one was unpredictable or frightening.

Even with its weaknesses, I implore you to see this film. We need to keep getting fresh films like this that take risks and show us original concepts.

The only other Dracula movie I've seen was the original 1931 movie while I was in class, though I was barely paying attention to it, so...

Anyway, this movie was pretty decent and it was enjoyable for what it was. (I got the theatre all to myself, which was fun, but I forgot how big and salty a large bag of popcorn was, so that may have ruined it for me) The acting was fine, the characters were at least mildly interesting, I liked the costumes, and the tension was decent as well.

I do think that Woody Norman did pretty well, his character was probably my favorite overall lol

What confused me a little is that the characters were a bit stupid?? So, Dracula is on the ship (though I don't think they know it's him yet), killing people on the ship, they don't decide to search the crates until later in the movie, and in the middle of the night at that?

However, the movie did manage to get me slightly sad during one of the scenes, which is good because I usually get mad at movies instead of sad.

I'd try to give it a watch if I were you but don't expect a cinematic masterpiece or anything like that.