Demeter - Il risveglio di Dracula

'The Last Voyage of the Demeter' ended up being a lot better than I expected. I haven't seen a good vampire film in such a long time that I was really starting to suspect the genre had very little left to offer. Naturally then, I went into this film with rather low expectations. The film pleasantly surprised me though.

The film is very well made. We start with a scene from later in the movie. I'm not always the biggest fan of this, but in this case it was needed as there was a lengthy time of set-up at the beginning of the film, where if there wasn't promise of excitement to come, it could've lost some audience members.

Once the horror begins it was reasonably effective. The ship in the middle of the ocean is a truly great setting for a horror movie. There are a lot of night scenes too (vampire movies naturally always have a lot of those) which added to the suspenseful atmosphere.

And outside of the horror there was some decent stuff going on too. Some character's who were actually fairly likeable (unheard of in a modern horror film, right?). Also some very well written dialogue helped flesh things out and kept the less interesting scenes afloat.

The film wasn't afraid to break some boundaries too. Often in films like this you can tell at the start all the characters that are 100% going to be safe, but that wasn't the case here. I was pleasantly surprised by that.

All in all this did about as well with the concept as could've been expected. It's not a film I will likely ever watch again. But it passed two hours for me in reasonably enjoyable fashion. 6.5/10.

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.

I enjoyed The Last Voyage of the Demeter. It's a cool stand-alone movie in a subgenre I frequently enjoy. There are a bunch of cool scenes and powerful moments. It does a good job creating unique characters. The performances are fairly good all around, with the standout being Liam Cunningham of GoT fame.

The movie also has a bunch of issues. I couldn't understand a lot of the dialogue. This is partly due to the accents, but more to do with sound mixing. I wasn't as engaged as I should have been. And not everything works.

But the biggest thing holding it back is that it's slow. It takes a while to get going. It's a full hour into the movie before you see anything. Now this could have been enjoyable if we didn't know what to expect. We would have been wondering what's happening, what's causing all of this. But of course the trailers give it away.

And even for people who avoid trailers like me and went in not knowing, the movie tells you in text right at the start. Instead of filling you with curiosity, you already know and are just waiting to get to it. And even after that, it doesn't pick up the pace all that much.

I still had a pretty good time with this movie, although I don't really see myself watching it again. (1 viewing, opening Thursday 8/10/2023)

Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) is a movie that my wife and I saw in theaters this evening. The storyline follows the infamous voyage of the Demeter from Romania to London with a mysterious cargo. As strange things start happening around the ship the crew starts poking around the cargo and find a "stowaway" that warns them about an unworldly entity they must escape. Will the crew take the warning seriously or fall victim to whatever is haunting the ship?

This movie is directed by André Øvredal (Troll Hunter) and stars Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton), Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones), David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad), Aisling Franciosi (Game of Thrones) and Jon Jon Briones (Ratched).

This storyline, settings and special effects had so much potential. The plot is well set up, the attire and props are perfect, and the cast was well selected. The CGI used to create Dracula and his face were outstanding. There's some really creepy moments in here and some worthwhile jump scares. The kill scenes were intense, brutal and have nice gore and blood splatter. The transformation scenes are good too. However, the movie does run a bit long, I didn't "love" the ending and the entire film I felt like there was something missing and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Overall, this is a unique and solid addition to the Dracula universe but leaves you with a feeling it was missing something that keep it from being outstanding. I would score this a 6-6.5/10 and recommend seeing it once.

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.