Drácula - A Última Viagem do Demeter

'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 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)

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.

Interesting premise that made me imagine something along the lines of Alien. And they managed to create a great atmosphere through quality set decorations and lighting. Unfortunately that atmosphere never evolved and the horror elements never really materialized. The vampire makeup reminded me more of the now, rather familiar, orcs from Lord of the rings - and not the terrifying creature it should have been.

The feeling of dread and the possible cat-and-mouse-hunts during the night segments never materialized. And what was there were too often lost in darkness and ultra-fast editing. Alien on a sailing vessel, this was not.

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.