doomed voyage of the demeter

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter

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Watch The Last Voyage of the Demeter with a subscription on Paramount+, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter finds a fresh angle on Dracula's oft-told tale, although lackluster execution often undercuts the story's claustrophobic tension.

A solidly scary Dracula movie, The Last Voyage of the Demeter will reward patient viewers with some intense scenes and plenty of eerie atmosphere.

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André Øvredal

Corey Hawkins

Aisling Franciosi

Liam Cunningham

David Dastmalchian

Jon Jon Briones

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the last voyage of the demeter.

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As those of you with a decent grasp of horror trivia already know, the Demeter was the ship whose ultimately doomed journey to deliver some especially dangerous cargo from Transylvania to London was chronicled in the seventh chapter of the Bram Stoker classic Dracula . Although this section, running 16 pages in my copy, contains some of the most evocative imagery in that sometimes clumsily written book, the whole episode is not that important to the narrative. It simply illustrates how the title character got from point A to B, and on the rare occasions when filmmakers have chosen to bring this story to the screen, the journey is either reduced to a brief montage or newspaper headline or ignored entirely. Now comes “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” a feature-length expansion of those 16 pages that fully examines the strange occurrences aboard one of the most doomed sea journeys in literary history.

Upon hearing this movie's premise for the first time, I wasn’t entirely convinced it could work. This would be a film where practically every audience member would not only know exactly what the supernatural force at the center of the story is before the Universal logo hits the screen. But they would also—barring some unexpected deviation from the well-known narrative—know exactly how the on-screen events would play out. To me, it looked like just another attempt by Universal to introduce the character that played such a key role in the studio’s history to contemporary audiences following the misfired likes of “Dracula: Untold” and the recent and dreadful “ Renfield .” That may have been the case, but the results are a big step up from those previous stumbles, an often striking take on the tale that makes up for what it lacks in surprise with a lot of style and some undeniably effective scare moments.

Set in 1897, the film opens as the Demeter is about to set sail from Transylvania to London, carrying Captain Eliot ( Liam Cunningham ), loyal first mate Wojchek ( David Dastmalchian ), his grandson Toby ( Woody Norman ), and a small crew that grows even smaller when some of the locals recruited for the journey get skittish when they see that the cargo contains many large crates being sent by an unknown figure to Carfax Abbey in London. Among those recruited at the last second is Clemens ( Corey Hawkins ), who signs on as the ship’s doctor to get passage home to England. His expertise comes in handy when one of the boxes is accidentally opened, and an apparent stowaway ( Aisling Franciosi ) is discovered with a mysterious malady that requires numerous blood transfusions. 

Soon, strange things begin happening on the ship. All the livestock on board and Toby’s beloved dog are slaughtered throughout one grisly evening. Sailors begin seeing and hearing odd things at night while on watch, and even the ship’s rats appear to have vanished, leading up to the deathless line, “A boat without rats—such a thing is against nature.” The members of the crew soon begin disappearing, driving the already skittish ones who remain further into paranoia that is not helped when the stowaway, whose name proves to be Anna, finally wakes up and informs Clemens and the others that to steal a line from Mel Brooks , yes, they have Nosferatu. As Dracula ( Javier Botet ) continues snacking through the ship, the rapidly dwindling survivors try to figure out how to stop him before they reach London.

The film was directed by André Øvredal , whose previous credits include such intriguing horror-related efforts as “ Trollhunter ,” “ The Autopsy of Jane Doe ,” and the underrated “ Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark .” This time, he is trying to figure out how to tell a story in which everyone in the audience will be ahead of the characters on the screen at virtually every given point. He accomplishes that primarily by focusing heavily on visual style, creating a moody and haunted atmosphere throughout—even during the scenes set in the daytime—that is both eerily beautiful and just plain eerie. "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" is one of the better-looking horror films to come along in a while. The cat-and-mouse games between Dracula and the crew are staged in a manner that suggests a seafaring variation of “ Alien ,” with Øvredal milking scenes for maximum tension before culminating in some nasty business. 

Bear in mind, some of that business is indeed quite nasty—the visualization of Dracula shown here is a particularly grotesque and demonic variation, the scenes of slaughter are definitely gory enough to earn the “R” rating, and not only does the one character you are conditioned to expect to somehow avoid a gruesome demise end up suffering just that, but they also do so more than once. The performances, especially the ones from genre MVP Dastmalchian, Franciosi (so effective in “ The Nightingale ”), and Botet, are all strong and convincing, which helps to raise the emotional stakes to make up for the lack of surprise.

There are two points where the film stumbles a bit. Although the relatively slow and measured pacing employed by Øvredal to generate suspense is mostly effective and preferable to the quick-cut approach others might have taken, a few scenes here run on too long for their own good. Also, the film—Spoiler Alert!—indulges in one of the most irritating elements of contemporary horror cinema, a final scene that exists solely to set up future movies if this one does well at the box office. 

And yet, the rest of the movie works enough so that these flaws don’t hurt things too badly. “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” may not be a classic in the annals of Dracula cinema along the lines of the Terence Fisher's Hammer production “Horror of Dracula,” Werner Herzog ’s version of “ Nosferatu the Vampyre ,” or Francis Ford Coppola ’s “Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula.” But it is a smart, well-made, and sometimes downright creepy take on the tale that both horror buffs and regular moviegoers can appreciate in equal measure. 

In theaters now.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

Rated R for bloody violence.

118 minutes

Corey Hawkins as Clemens

Aisling Franciosi as Anna

Liam Cunningham as Captain Eliot

David Dastmalchian as Wojchek

Chris Walley as Abrams

Stefan Kapičić as Olgaren

Martin Furulund as Larsen

Nikolai Nikolaeff as Petrofsky

Woody Norman as Toby

Jon Jon Briones as Cook

Javier Botet as Dracula / Nosferatu

• André Øvredal

Writer (based on the chapter "The Captain's Log" of Dracula by)

• Bram Stoker

Writer (screen story by)

• Bragi F. Schut
• Zak Olkewicz
• Christian Wagner
• Patrick Larsgaard
• Julian Clarke

Cinematographer

• Bear McCreary

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter

• A crew sailing from Varna (Bulgaria) by the Black Sea to England find that they are carrying very dangerous cargo.
• Based on a single chapter, the Captain's Log, from Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel "Dracula", the story is set aboard the Russian schooner Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo - 24 unmarked wooden crates - from Carpathia to London. The film will detail the strange events that befell the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a terrifying presence on board the ship. When it finally arrived near Whitby Harbour, it was derelict. There was no trace of the crew.
• England, August 6, 1897. Unable to escape the relentless breakers, the battered merchant ship Demeter lies soulless on the sharp rocks of Whitby. The terrifying news chills the bone to the marrow; however, there isn't a living soul on board to unravel the mystery of the ghost ship carrying wooden crates from Romania to London. But the captain's log details harrowing events of despair, madness, and ravenous bloodthirst on the open sea. What unfathomable evil doomed the Demeter and its crew to suffer a fate worse than death? — Nick Riganas
• On August 6, 1897, the merchant ship Demeter washes ashore in England. Among the wreckage found by the police is the log kept by her captain, Eliot. One month earlier, the Demeter makes port in Varna, Bulgaria, to pick up cargo for transportation to London. The shipment, consisting of multiple large wooden crates, is transported by locals from Romania. However, the locals refuse to load the cargo onto the ship, insisting that they must leave the area before sundown. One of them hands the quartermaster, Wojchek, and another crewman, Olgaren, a large sum of money and wishes the Demeter a safe voyage before departing with the others. Clemens, a doctor educated at the University of Cambridge, overhears that the ship is looking for crewmen. He attempts to convince the crew that his medical skills and knowledge of astronomy would make him a valuable asset to them. Wojchek rejects him and hires an older man instead, but while helping to load one of the crates, the new hire - frightened upon recognizing the dragon emblem on its shorter side - accidentally releases the tackle rope, causing the crate to fall. Clemens witnesses the accident and saves Eliot's grandson, Toby, from being crushed by the loose crate. The new hire declares the dragon emblem a bad omen and leaves; out of gratitude for Clemens' intervention, Eliot hires him as a replacement. One of the crates falls and breaks open in the cargo hold. Clemens investigates and finds a woman buried in dirt inside. She is barely alive, and he performs blood transfusions on her to treat what he believes to be an infection. Later in the Aegean Sea, Clemens and Olgaren see a mysterious figure in the fog on deck. The next night, all the animals aboard the ship are killed, including the ship's dog, Huckleberry. The crew, fearing a rabies outbreak, throws them all overboard. Anna, the secret stowaway, wakes up and warns them about a monster from Transylvania, a creature that feeds on the blood of humans. In her town they called it Dracula, to whom she was given as a slave of blood so that the monster would leave them alone. She claims that Dracula is already aboard the ship and looking to feed, revealing several bites on her body. Dracula hunts the crew during the night, biting Olgaren and turning him into a vampiric thrall. Olgaren is temporarily restrained, tied to a table; he breaks free, and, seeing Toby in the hold, begins hunting the boy and traps him in the captain's quarters, along with Dracula. As the crew attempts to save him, Toby is bitten by Dracula. The next morning, the vampiric Olgaren, who had been tied to the mast by the crew, bursts into flames as the sun rises. Despite blood transfusions from his grandfather, Toby dies, and is wrapped in parts of the sailcloth for his sea-burial. During the funeral, the captain believes he sees Toby moving; he unwraps him, only for Toby to suddenly attack. The vampiric Toby catches fire in the sunlight (also severely burning his grandfather) before Clemens is able to throw him into the ocean. The remaining crew want to destroy the ship and drown Dracula to prevent him from causing chaos once they reach London. Captain Eliot, Abrams, and Wojchek are killed by Dracula, and Anna is bitten during an attempt to save Clemens. Clemens rescues Anna by hitting Dracula with an axe, and Anna manages to crush Dracula with a part of the mast. Anna and Clemens jump ship, thinking the vampire is dead; before sinking, the ship ends up running aground on the British coast, enabling Dracula to push the mast off of his body, roaring in victory. Anna and Clemens float away on debris, and she reveals to Clemens that she is becoming a vampire after Dracula's bite; Clemens' blood transfusions only delay the change. As the day dawns, and not wanting to become a monster, Anna willingly immolates herself in the sunrise as Clemens drifts ashore. Arriving in London, Clemens goes to a local tavern where he draws Anna's portrait in his notebook. He hears the knocking signal from the Demeter's crew of "all clear", and then sees Dracula, dressed as an aristocrat, laughing at him; the vampire disappears. Leaving the pub, Clemens sees Dracula's shadow and follows him; he vows, for the memory and honour of his dead companions, that he will kill Dracula and send him back to Hell.

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter review – Dracula horror is lost at sea

A chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, set upon a ship, is expanded to a gory 2-hour film, an idea that works better in theory than in practice

A s Universal continues to find creative ways to rework its iconic monster movies in the shadow of the iconically disastrous Dark Universe (a set of interconnected horrors cancelled after Tom Cruise’s Mummy wrapped up with a loss), there’s an alluring elevator pitch at the heart of their latest offering. Rather than retelling Bram Stoker’s Dracula in full once again, why not take one chapter, The Captain’s Log, detailing his journey on boat from Romania to England, and dig into what happened to the crew members he feasted on?

But coming just months after Renfield , this year’s other novel spin on Dracula, focused on the cursed count’s even more cursed aide, it’s another idea that works better as a logline than a full movie, stretched to breaking point in The Last Voyage of Demeter, a 2-hour film with frighteningly very little to feast on. It’s mostly fascinating for its existence, a gothic period horror made on an unusually grand scale, harking back to the days of Hammer, an outlier in a genre landscape that usually bets on smaller budgets aimed at a younger audience. It might explain why it’s taken two decades for the film to make it to the screen, a voyage through development hell that took in stars such as Noomi Rapace, Viggo Mortensen, Jude Law and Ben Kingsley and directors such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Marcus Nispel, The Descent’s Neil Marshall and Flightplan’s Robert Schwentke. The script, originally written by Escape Room’s Bragi Schut Jr, has also seen multiple revisions with Bullet Train’s Zak Olkewicz receiving a co-credit and at least five other writers noted as helping with off-screen additional material.

Production finally began over two years ago, with Troll Hunter’s André Øvredal at the helm, and the finished result is hard to extricate from this tortured process – the film very much the end product of far too many cooks toiling away for far too long. What often happens with a movie that takes so long to go from pitch to premiere is that those involved tend to forget the whys and whats, the mission of making something overriding the motivation. Twenty years on, it’s hard to understand why we’re on this journey and who is supposed to care.

The Straight Outta Compton alum and two-time Tony nominee Corey Hawkins (who also managed to be the best part of Joel Coen’s starry take on Macbeth in 2021) tries hard as anchor, playing a doctor who finds his way onto the ill-fated Demeter, alongside a mostly unwelcoming crew led by Liam Cunningham as captain. There’s a shipment of large boxes, contents of which are unknown, but as the ship takes to the water, there begins a sneaking suspicion that something monstrous might be onboard.

One of the film’s great many errors is fatally misunderstanding the unique appeal of Dracula as an all-timer villain. The very best adaptations have had the breadth to use him as both man and monster, the suave to the savage, but here, he’s reduced to just some creature, a production line B-movie baddie and a poorly designed one at that, looking like a gargoyle just came to life. The effort that’s clearly been funneled into the film’s extravagant production design has been weirdly withheld from that of Dracula himself, a cheap and immediately unscary beast, set to trouble only the dreams of those who could have done a better job in bringing him to life.

Despite the setting, the film also lacks the oppressive claustrophobia it desperately needs, the nightmarish fear of being trapped with a monster in an inescapable place, heading towards doom. Schut Jr has spoken of Alien as inspiration but unlike that film, an inspiration to so many, he’s never able to either make the workplace tensions crackle or truly immerse us in the awful clamminess of such a predicament. With suspense then at zero, Øvredal goes full steam ahead with some admirably uncensored gore and some less easy-to-admire jump scares more likely to cause eye-rolling than seat-ejecting. Hawkins is fine enough, with a British accent that’s mostly passable but his character is written without a shred of conviction, confusingly discordant moments of exposition making him a mystery to us, while Aisling Franciosi, slowly becoming the new Elisabeth Moss of actors whose roles are defined almost entirely by trauma, is effective in a limited capacity as a surprise crew-mate, boxed up for later snacking. There’s no real surprise to where we’re heading, given the source material, and so a great deal of the film is a rather meandering wait for the inevitable.

It’s ultimately a doomed voyage: for the crew, for the audience and for Universal’s monster movie strategy at large.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is out in Australian cinemas now, in US cinemas on 11 August and in the UK later this year

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• How <i>The Last Voyage of the Demeter</i> Revamps a Chilling Chapter From <i>Dracula</i>

How  The Last Voyage of the Demeter  Revamps a Chilling Chapter From  Dracula

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Last Voyage of the Demeter .

The seventh chapter of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula , titled "The Captain's Log," chronicles the fate of the crew of the doomed merchant ship the Demeter through a series of logbook entries detailing the vessel's disastrous voyage from the Black Sea port of Varna to Whitby, England.

Unaware that Dracula is onboard, the captain writes how, over the course of their journey, crew members went missing until just he and the first mate were left on the Demeter. After the first mate caught sight of "a man, tall and thin, and ghastly pale," he jumped overboard rather than die by the vampire's hand. Eventually, the captain lashed himself to the wheel with a crucifix in hand to try to bring the ship into port.

"I shall tie my hands to the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and along with them I shall tie that which He, It, dare not touch," reads the captain's final log entry, which is found rolled up inside a corked bottle in his pocket after the Demeter arrives in Whitby with no one alive onboard. "And then, come good wind or foul, I shall save my soul, and my honour as a captain. I am growing weaker, and the night is coming on. If He can look me in the face again, I may not have time to act."

The Last Voyage of the Demeter , in theaters Aug. 11, takes this chilling interlude in the original story and turns it into a full-length fright flick. "I wanted to make a genuine horror movie about this little part of the novel," says director André Øvredal ( The Autopsy of Jane Doe , Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ). "I found that to be a great challenge and a great way of doing something that could be part of [ Dracula 's] huge, wonderful legacy, but wouldn't risk standing next to giant movies [that have come before]. It's its own thing."

The long journey of The Last Voyage of the Demeter

Øvredal signed on to helm Demeter from a screenplay by Bragi Schut Jr. and Zak Olkewicz in October 2019, nearly two decades after Phoenix Pictures acquired Schut Jr.'s original script in 2003. Prior to Øvredal's involvement, a variety of directors, from Robert Schwentke to Neil Marshall to David Slade, had been attached to the project at different points in time.

The single chapter is such a captivating one that Demeter producers Mike Medavoy and Bradley J. Fischer say they were determined to get a movie adaptation made no matter how long it took.

" Dracula is obviously a very iconic and well-tread piece of IP that's been in the public domain forever. But this particular story was one that hadn't really been dramatized. It's been used as connective tissue in other Dracula adaptations," says Fischer, referencing scenes in 1922's Nosferatu and 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula . "But no one had told the story of what happens on this ship across the body of a single film."

Demeter traps its characters in a contained, isolated setting at the mercy of an elusive monster, a narrative arc that Medavoy says brought to mind one iconic horror movie in particular.

"It reminded me of Alien with Dracula in it. Dracula is the alien on the ship," he says. "That's what drew me to the story."

Dracula at sea

Demeter stars Liam Cunningham as Captain Eliot, David Dastmalchian as first mate Wojchek, and Jon Jon Briones, Martin Furulund, Stefan Kapicic, Nikolai Nikolaeff, and Chris Walley as the ship's crew. It also introduces some additional main players who don't feature in the book: Captain Eliot's grandson Toby (Woody Norman), Dr. Clemens (Corey Hawkins), and a stowaway named Anna (Aisling Franciosi) who is smuggled onboard by Dracula as a food source.

The role of Dracula (or Nosferatu) belongs to veteran creature actor Javier Botet, who has terrified audiences for years playing monsters in movies like 2013's Mama , 2016's The Conjuring 2 , 2017's IT , and 2018's Slender Man . "[Botet] breaches that careful relationship between human character and monster," Øvredal says. "He can find intelligence just through body language in how a creature is portrayed on screen."

That's a quality Øvredal needed in his Dracula, as Demeter paints the vampire as a vicious, bloodthirsty beast rather than the sophisticated, seductive count he often appears as.

"Depicting Dracula as a monstrous, more freaky character was very alluring," Øvredal says. "I wanted to lean into the fact that he's lived for 400 years. I didn't want to see a beautiful Hollywood actor being charming and suave.

"We also removed the sexuality that Dracula is often depicted with because it's essentially just a survival tale for everyone, including him," he adds. "I wanted to see that he has survived and survived and that he will survive this journey as well because, as we know, the story of Dracula continues on."

How The Last Voyage of the Demeter ends

In Stoker's Dracula , the Demeter arrives in England amid a great storm. Witnesses see a large dog disembark from the ship and find only the corpse of the captain still on board.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter offers an inside look at all the horrors that play out on the ship throughout its final journey.

"One of the great thematic elements of the story that is profound in its horror is the way that Dracula takes from each character the thing that person loves the most, including turning the ship itself into a living nightmare of the sea," Fischer says. "It's not enough that it's sustaining itself off of the blood of these people. It wants them to suffer in a way and enjoys it."

However, unlike in the book, the movie ends with one person who was onboard the Demeter, Clemens, surviving the passage and making his way to London with the intent of hunting Dracula down. When asked whether this twist opens the door for a sequel, Øvredal says it would be "quite a revisionist take" on what happens in the book from that point on.

"We try to stay reasonably true to the novel in this depiction," he says. "This movie is really about honoring the novel. But if you go further with Clemens' character, he obviously doesn't exist in the book."

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‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ Review: Blood on the Water

This horror movie, based on a chapter from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” is set on a cargo ship unwittingly transporting an evil demon.

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By Natalia Winkelman

Horror heads are accustomed to screeching at the screen, “Don’t go in the basement!” In “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” I found myself inclined toward the reverse exclamation: “Just go below deck and kill him already!”

Based on a chapter in Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula,” this squally scary movie is set on a London-bound merchant ship doomed to a bloody routine. Days are safe, but sundown brings the terrorizing thirst of the vessel’s vampire stowaway, who emerges in darkness to bite a few necks before retiring to his makeshift cargo coffin.

The regularity of Dracula’s circadian timetable raises the question: Why doesn’t the crew just attack around noon? It could have saved the movie’s beneficent hero, Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a boatload of trouble.

The movie begins as Clemens, a British doctor, appeals to Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) to join the Demeter’s company. The only educated man onboard, Clemens nonetheless proves an able deckhand, winning the favor of both the salty first mate, Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), and the captain’s wide-eyed grandson, Toby (Woody Norman).

But “The Last Voyage,” directed by André Ovredal, doesn’t waste time on characterizations. Before long, bad omens and creaky floorboards give way to repetitive, swollen set pieces as Dracula picks off the shipmates one by one. The script does find time for a feeble feminist gesture — the story’s sole woman can cock a rifle — and a monologue about racism. These efforts to update the tale are about as successful as those of the sorry crew, whose fates were written over a century ago.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter Rated R for fighting and biting. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters.

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Summary Based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the terrifying story of the merchant ship Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo—fifty unmarked wooden crates—from Carpathia to London. Strange events befall the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean v ... Read More

Directed By : André Øvredal

Written By : Bram Stoker, Bragi F. Schut, Zak Olkewicz

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

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Corey Hawkins

Aisling franciosi, liam cunningham, captain eliot, david dastmalchian, chris walley, jon jon briones, stefan kapicic, martin furulund, nikolai nikolaeff, woody norman, javier botet, dracula, nosferatu, graham turner, andy murray, deputy fisher, nicolo pasetti, deputy hirsch, christopher york, fletcher - whitby, vladimir cabak, harbour master, rudolf danielewicz, old romani wiseman, noureddine farihi, one-eyed sailor, malcolm galea, sailor #1 - card game, lightkeeper, critic reviews.

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‘The Last Voyage Of The Demeter’: Review

By Tim Grierson, Senior US Critic 2023-08-10T16:00:00+01:00

A doomed ship in more ways than one

Dir: Andre Ovredal. US. 2023. 119mins

“Evil is on board,” intones one of the main characters in The Last Voyage Of The Demeter , a period horror film whose rich sense of dread easily outclasses everything else on its waterlogged adventure. Director Andre Ovredal casts Corey Hawkins as a 19th-century English doctor who, along with the rest of the seamen on the doomed vessel, will do battle with Dracula, who has smuggled himself onto the ship in search of fresh prey. Adapted from a chapter in Bram Stoker’s novel, the picture initially has some gory fun with its close-quarters suspense, but Ovredal unsuccessfully tries to elevate his monster movie with flimsy psychological depth and unconvincing emotional underpinnings.

Spooky, old-fashioned foreboding

Universal releases Last Voyage in the US on August 11. (In the UK the film, which is titled Dracula: Voyage Of The Demeter , opens a week later.) There’s not much horror competition at the multiplex, but dismissive reviews may further hurt a picture which is coming out at the tail end of summer movie season. Last Voyage may attract attention on streaming around Halloween, but even then fans of vampire films may find little at stake here. 

The year is 1897, and Clemens (Hawkins) has talked his way onto the Demeter, a merchant ship leaving Romania and heading back to England. The crusty crew is suspicious of this soft-spoken outsider, but soon they will have a bigger concern when livestock starts being slaughtered and men go missing. It’s all the work of the ferocious Count Dracula (Javier Botet), who is hiding below deck, waiting to pounce.

Early on, Norwegian director Ovredal ( Trollhunter , Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark ) hints that tragedy awaits these characters. Between the film’s title and the outcome of the individuals in Stoker’s novel, it’s obvious audiences shouldn’t expect a happy ending, but even so, there’s a satisfying aura of doom hovering over the proceedings. Bear McCreary’s groaning, operatic score only further amplifies the gothic gloom as Clemens, the Demeter’s rugged veteran captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) and the rest of the crew slowly grasp the nature of the threat which descends upon them each night.

What’s intriguing, but ultimately frustrating, about Last Voyage is that it exists at a time when the world is unfamiliar with vampires. The panicked confusion creates an additional layer of terror — no one has seen anything like this creature who bites into necks, feasting on blood — but that chaos becomes less interesting once Ovredal starts intentionally withholding information from Clemens and the others. 

 A key example of this is with Aisling Franciosi, who plays Anna, a young woman who has been smuggled onto the Demeter along with Dracula - he has been sucking her blood to stay alive during the early stages of hte voyage. But when the crew finds and rescues Anna, they ask her next to nothing about this monster — which is inexplicable considering she (and her entire village) knows everything about how he operates. 

Sadly, this is just one way in which screenwriters Bragi Schut, Jr. and Zak Olkewicz craft convoluted obstacles for our heroes. As Wojchek, the ship’s strong-willed first mate, David Dastmalchian is forced to play a sailor who, no matter what, objects to Clemens’ sound reasoning, constantly complicating matters simply because the script needs there to be conflict between the crewmembers. Additionally, Eliot’s scrappy grandson Toby ( C’mon C’mon ’s Woody Norman) can be counted on to thoughtlessly put himself into peril, even after he has been explicitly told to stay inside with the door locked. 

When Last Voyage is focused on scare sequences, the film jolts to life, and Ovredal imbues the scenes with spooky, old-fashioned foreboding. Trapped in the middle of the ocean, their destination still weeks away, the Demeter ’s crew learn that night is when the beast will strike, each sunset generating palpable anxiety. Ovredal merely hints at Dracula’s hideous countenance, showing him in shadow for a few brief moments before he attacks again, bloody carnage and anguished shrieks left in his wake. There are vague hints of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu in the film’s depiction of this demonic figure, and the relatively low-tech battle between the men and the monster — the crew only have knives and rifles to battle this fleet menace — has a pleasingly primitive urgency.

But Hawkins is the only member of the ensemble given much room to develop a well-rounded character, and even then only barely. And as the body count starts to mount, Last Voyage grows more ponderous, observing as paranoia overtakes the crew, turning them against one another. Because Ovredal never sees the characters beyond horror-film types, it’s hard to be invested in their collective terror about an evil they cannot comprehend. The Demeter is headed to a bad end, but Last Voyage capsizes even earlier.

Production companies: Phoenix Pictures, Wise Owl Media

Worldwide distribution: Universal Pictures

Producers: Bradley J. Fischer, Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messner 

Screenplay: Bragi Schut, Jr., and Zak Olkewicz, from a screen story by Bragi Schut, Jr., based on the log of the Demeter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Cinematography: Tom Stern

Production design: Edward Thomas

Editing: Patrick Larsgaard

Music: Bear McCreary 

Main cast: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, David Dastmalchian, Javier Botet, Liam Cunningham, Woody Norman

Read  Screen ’s reviews

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The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter - Official 'A Look Inside' Featurette

Join members of the cast and crew for a behind-the-scenes look at The Last Voyage of the Demeter, including a peek at the film's story, setting, and a discussion about Dracula. The Last Voyage of the Demeter stars Corey Hawkins (In the Heights, Straight Outta Compton) as Clemens, a doctor who joins the Demeter crew, Aisling Franciosi (Game of Thrones, The Nightingale) as an unwitting stowaway, Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones, Clash of the Titans) as the ship’s captain and David Dastmalchian (Dune, the Ant-Man franchise) as the Demeter’s first mate. The film also stars Jon Jon Briones (Ratched, American Horror Story), Stefan Kapicic (Deadpool films, Better Call Saul), Nikolai Nikolaeff (Stranger Things, Bruised), and Javier Botet (It films, Mama).

Based on a single chapter from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the terrifying story of the merchant ship Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo—fifty unmarked wooden crates—from Carpathia to London. Strange events befall the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a merciless presence onboard the ship. When the Demeter finally arrives off the shores of England, it is a charred, derelict wreck. There is no trace of the crew. From DreamWorks Pictures and the producers of Zodiac and Black Swan, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is directed by André Øvredal (Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, Trollhunter), from a script by Bragi F. Schut (Escape Room), Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Counterfeiters) and Zak Olkewicz (the upcoming Bullet Train), based on the chapter “The Captain’s Log” of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The film is produced by Brad Fischer and by Oscar-nominated producer Mike Medavoy and Arnold Messer for Phoenix Pictures and is executive produced by Matthew Hirsch.The Last Voyage of the Demeter opens in theaters on August 11, 2023.

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The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

Based on a chapter of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter follows the doomed journey of a merchant ship crew secretly stalked by an evil presence.

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Description.

A terrifying new addition to the Dracula legend, based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker's classic novel, The Last Voyage of the Demeter chronicles the doomed journey of a merchant ship ferrying 50 mysterious wooden crates from Carpathia to London. As they set sail, the crew soon discover they are not alone on board: at night they are stalked by a hidden passenger whose monstrous thirst for blood turns the trip into a harrowing nightmare of tension, terror and unfathomable evil.

Cast and crew

André Øvredal

Corey Hawkins

Aisling Franciosi

David Dastmalchian

Liam Cunningham

Javier Botet

Bragi Schut, Jr.

Zak Olkewicz

Additional information, released year.

Additional terms

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) | Transcript

• August 31, 2023

Based on a single chapter, the Captain’s Log, from Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel “Dracula”, the story is set aboard the Russian schooner Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo – 24 unmarked wooden crates – from Carpathia to London. The film will detail the strange events that befell the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a terrifying presence on board the ship. When it finally arrived near Whitby Harbour, it was derelict. There was no trace of the crew.

(grand orchestral fanfare playing)

(thunder rumbling softly)

(thunder rumbling)

(wind howling)

Constable, a boat’s blown in with the storm.

(thunder crashing)

(indistinct chatter)

(breathes heavily)

I went aboard, sir, to see if anyone was alive.

What’s that?

Captain’s log.

ELIOT: This log is a record and a warning.

And if it finds you, God help you, as he has abandoned the Demeter.

We tried to stop him.

If we didn’t succeed, God have mercy on your souls.

I can’t go back, sir.

(sails rustling)

(hooves clopping)

(wheels creaking)

(horse sputters)

(kids laughing)

(lively chatter)

(excited shouting)

(coins clinking)

MAN: Hey, mister! Sit down! It’s your turn.

MAN 2: Come on, wake up.

MAN 3: Let’s go back home.

(chuckling)

(lively chatter continues)

(wheels creak)

(speaks Romani)

ELIOT: Sixth of July, made port in Varna, Bulgaria.

Don’t wander far, Toby. We’re not staying long.

TOBY: I won’t, Grandpa. I promise.

ELIOT: Our crew was a few hands short.

WOJCHEK: Captain.

ELIOT: And I have tasked Mr. Wojchek to remedy this before we take on cargo.

(lively chatter, laughter)

The Demeter is looking for hands all the way to England.

Open your ears, men.

Demeter needs three able-bodied seamen.

Bound for London. We pay in gold.

I’m able.

And strong as an ox.

Who are you, boy?

You dress like an educated man. Where did you go to school?

University of Cambridge.

I have a steady hand with a needle, and, uh… I have supplies if you’re in need of a ship doctor.

I–It’s been a while, but II do know my way around a boat, if not.

Learning about boats ain’t the same as keeping one afloat.

What did the sailor ever learn from a book that did him an ounce of good when he was lost at sea?

Astronomy, for one.

Can lose a chart. You can lose a compass.

But you can’t lose the stars, can you?

Never met an Englishman in such a hurry to return to England.

Be gone as soon as we reach it, no doubt.

We need strong crew, not passengers.

(men groaning, murmuring)

No, never mind you.

(conversation continues in Romani)

WOJCHEK: What’s he saying?

He says they cannot stay.

The hell they can’t.

We need their hands or we lose the tide.

He says they need to leave before the sun sinks.

What kind of nonsense is that?

(coins clink)

MAN: For your men.

This is more than I paid to bring the damn cargo here.

What did he spit at the end?

“Good leave” or “good riddance”?

“Good luck.”

Come on, pull!

(men grunting)

(chatter continues)

(mechanical creaking)

MAN: See, let go. Let go!

(string music playing nearby)

(woman screams)

(people murmuring)

Are you all right, boy?

ELIOT: Toby?

Mr. Wojchek, hold that man!

You never said nothing about dragons.

I know this mark.

It is a bad omen.

WOJCHEK: You could have killed the boy.

I don’t give a whore’s ass about dragons!

Keep your gold, the devil’s serpent.

God save you all.

May he save the ship.

May he save the crew.

Are you all right?

You injured?

Thank you, Mr. Clemens.

Yeah, sure.

We leave port within the hour.

You prove to be lying about knowing your way around a boat, I’ll throw you off the boat myself, astronomer.

Uh, ththank you, sir.

Larsen, get this stinking bunch of cockroaches underway.

LARSEN: You heard Mr. Wojchek.

Olgaren, get those crates stowed.

TOBY: Come on.

(dog barking)

Cast off! Ready the headsails.

PETROFSKY: Pull in the moorings!

Be quick about it!

WOJCHEK: Give me a way to steer.

She moves like a fat pig with all this weight.

Do you see that beam up there?

That’s where they used to hang pirates and mutineers.

Have you ever seen a real dead man, Mr. Clemens?

Let me show you the ship.

Captain’s cabin’s that big door.

There’s lots of maps and drawings in there, but captain doesn’t like me fiddling.

This here is Huckleberry.

But we just call him Huck.

(Huck barks)

CLEMENS: Hello, Huck.

That’s the cargo hold.

Everything there is headed for London.

You knock on wood like this if there’s any trouble.

Or to signal a change of watch or if the sky’s looking fierce.

You can hear it all the way from the bunks to the captain’s on a clear night.

I’ve heard it.

(laughs) Yes, I believe you have.

This is where we eat.

This used to be a lumber ship, built the old way.

But now everyone wants steam ships.

Captain says there’s no joy in metal ships.

Well, that’s the thing about progress, innit?

It cares not for joy, your captain’s or otherwise.

The Demeter’s a fine boat. No doubt.

Meet my crew, Mr. Clemens.

(animals bleating, squealing)

The faster we eat them,

the less crap I have to clean up.

CLEMENS: Mm.

(Huck barking, growling)

TOBY: Ahah, Huck. You know the rules.

And up here is the galley.

This here is Clemens.

He’s a doctor. A real one.

JOSEPH: We eat at six bells no sooner, no later.

You stay out of the galley.

And I won’t serve any man who takes the Lord’s name in vain.

He means that last one.

I mean all of them.

Do you know who Saint Nicholas is?

Patron saint of sailors.

Well, you’re not a heathen.

Thank the Lord for small favors.

Toby, show him to his quarters.

And get this mutt out of my kitchen.

TOBY: Huck!

ELIOT: On sixth July, we finished taking in cargo

Turkish cotton, ten barrels of petroleum and private crates marked for London with nine hands.

Crew of five, one ship doctor, two mates, cook and myself, captain.

(upbeat music playing)

Crew in high spirits.

(Toby laughing)

PETROFSKY: ♪ Oh, they call me Hangin’ Johnny… ♪

All is well, Captain.

Making about 12 knots on the nor’easter.

Wheel’s kicking a bit, but she’ll settle down.

We’ll reach London well before August the sixth.

For the crew’s sake, we better.

Already finding ways to spend the bonus pay.

♪ The holy family ♪

♪ So hang, boys, hang ♪

♪ They say I hung my mother… ♪

I’ve decided this is to be my final voyage, Mr. Wojchek.

I’m going to buy a little cottage in Ireland.

Toby will enjoy the countryside.

And I promised my daughter I wouldn’t let the sea air bleach the future out of him.

I intend to keep that promise.

I will arrange for you to be my successor as captain of the Demeter as soon as we reach London.

Sir, I…

You’re a good seaman, Mr. Wojchek.

The ship couldn’t ask for a better hand to guide her crew.

(singing continues in distance)

♪ Away, boys, away ♪

♪ They call me Hangin’ Johnny ♪

♪ So hang, boys, hang. ♪

(laughter, whooping in distance)

(rat squeaking)

(ship creaking softly)

(squeaking)

(soft hissing)

(rats squeaking frantically)

(low growling)

(wood creaks)

800 pounds eight ways, and minus the captain and first mate’s share, comes to round about…

Gonna get myself a proper shave and one of them waistcoats with the tails on.

Ooh, the English ladies love them tails.

Almost… almost as much as they love me.

If you put them over your face, mm, maybe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You’re the funny ones, aren’t you?

What are you lot gonna do with yours?

JOSEPH: “The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself.”

Although the Lord might not mind if I just simply watered myself.

Do you know what I will do this much?

(laughs) The same thing that you always do, Petrofsky.

Find the nearest brothel and spend the next month absolutely up to your gills in…

Mr. Abrams, if you please.

Apologies, Captain.

Forgot about the lad.

TOBY: I’m almost nine.

I know what a brothel is, anyway.

Do you, now?

It’s a place we pay women to take off their knickers.

Ah, I love kids!

(playful chatter)

PETROFSKY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

TOBY: Well, isn’t it?

ELIOT: Oh, close enough, lad.

Close enough.

Well, Mr. Clemens, what about you?

Our charter has agreed to pay a sizable bonus for timely arrival of his cargo in London.

You’re part of the crew, which means you earn a crewman’s share.

How do you plan spending it?

A new petticoat, perhaps?

Well, everything I desire in this life, unfortunately, coin will be of no aid.

(scoffs) And what would that be, now?

To understand this world.

The more of it I see, the less any of it makes sense.

The world cares little for sense, Mr. Clemens.

Perhaps it is not meant to be understood but rather experienced and accepted.

But I need to get to the heart of it.

And understand why the world has so much goodness inside it and yet…

(chuckles) Isn’t that what all men desire, mm?

ABRAMS: Well, hell, he’s right.

I’ll have his share, then.

(animals squealing)

(whining, barking)

What the devil is that?

ELIOT: Toby. See to the livestock.

(ship creaking)

(animals squealing wildly)

(frantic thumping)

What’s gotten into them?

It’s probably just the weather.

Hey, they can sense a storm coming.

(animals squealing frantically)

(squealing)

(frantic clucking)

Toby, give me a hand with this.

That should put them to rest.

(animals quiet down)

(ship creaking, rattling)

(objects clattering)

What was that, Mr. Clemens?

Fetch the captain, lad.

Tell him something fell in the cargo hold.

(doors creaking)

(soft clanging in distance)

(grunts softly)

(soft clanking in distance)

(shallow gasping)

(breathing heavily)

Stay with me.

(woman whimpering softly)

(grunts) Come on.

What in the seven hells?

She was below deck.

(woman whimpers)

A stowaway.

A stowaway who is going to die if we don’t administer proper medical care.

You want to help her?

Who knows what kind of diseased rat infections she has…

What do you need?

Her body’s infected.

I need to attempt a transfusion.

What are you babbling?

A blood transfusion.

She needs blood to fight the infection.

WOJCHEK: You’re joking.

You are of aid to me or you are in my way and need to leave.

In either case, please make yourself apparent and fulfill your purpose.

(whimpers weakly)

(weak, muffled grunting)

(shuddering breaths)

(wood creaking)

(exhale echoes)

CLEMENS: She’ll make it the night, but I need to continue with the transfusions until she has no more infected blood.

We’ve done all we can.

WOJCHEK: Then maybe she’ll wake up in time to see us toss her to the waves.

We let Poseidon deal with stowaways always have.

I didn’t save this girl’s life only to watch you end it.

At least let us off at the next port.

“Us,” is it?

I see where your loyalty lies, Mr. Clemens.

We stop, then we forfeit the bonus wage.

And I ain’t forfeiting the bonus wage for you or your diseased whore.

ELIOT: Mr. Wojchek, lower your voice.

Control your language.

I would prefer not to have my final voyage at the helm of the Demeter marred by the death of a young woman.

Stowaway or not.

We will repurpose the carpenter shed as the young woman’s quarters.

Thank you, sir.

And you will be solely dividing your own rations with your patient, Mr. Clemens.

CLEMENS: Toby.

You’ll look after her for me, will you?

Anyone tries to see her, you come get me or the captain straightaway, you understand?

All right, then. Go on. That’s a good lad.

OLGAREN: You’re making all sorts of friends, aren’t you, Mr. Clemens?

Woman on the ship. Bad omen. Hmm?

Men won’t be happy.

The men don’t need to be happy, do they, Mr. Olgaren?

They just need to get this boat to London, huh?

(Olgaren chuckles)

I’m trying to help you, son. Keep spouting words like that.

Maybe she’ll make it to London, but… but I reckon you’ll be swimming.

Knock if you need me.

Saves the pipes.

Understand?

Islands and rocks everywhere here.

So we’re in the Aegean, yes?

It’s the Mediterranean at dawn.

It’s good time, innit?

Greece should be to our starboard.

(hissing, growling)

Mr. Olgaren?

(knocks echoing)

(distant knock)

(screams) Jesus Christ!

Did you see it?

Did no one pass by?

See what? There’s no one on deck but us.

There is something out there.

(whimpering)

(sharp whoosh)

(growl echoes)

(grunts) What the…

(gasps) Oh, God, Huck.

(flies buzzing)

All the livestock?

Any man with knowledge of this heinous act needs to step forward now or find themselves in irons later.

(spits, smacks lips)

The girl…

Was in no shape to do anything of the sort, and Mr. Wojchek can attest to that, even if he’d rather not.

He’s right on this.

PETROFSKY: She didn’t need to. We all know.

Bad luck, woman on board.

Makes skies turn, animals go mad.

The dog was ripped into.

Perhaps he went rabid and was gored by one of the larger livestock as it attacked it.

You think Huck did this?

Ripped apart the animals?

No. He’s a good dog.

WOJCHEK: You heard the man.

Rabies. Bad luck is all.

Push on through as we always do.

If this is an outbreak, then we’ll need to make port.

Captain…

No, we won’t make our bonus, then.

What are you talking about? Then we lose the bonus wage.

We can’t make port. No.

ELIOT: Mr. Clemens, a malady of this sort, could a human catch it?

Rabies, it– it can’t pass to a human without it being bit.

Dispose of the meat.

Immediately.

JOSEPH: I guess we say the Lord’s Prayer over cabbage and potatoes for the rest of our voyage.

(clattering)

Have you all been struck dumb?

It’s not rabies that opened up the livestock cages.

And there is only two people on this boat I have not sailed with fore now: the cy in the toolshed and this darky savage pretending to be doctor.

Say it again.

(speaks Russian)

OLGAREN: No man did this.

Evil is on board.

Powerful evil.

(heart beating slowly)

(heartbeat continues faster)

DRACULA (growling): Anna.

(water splashes)

That bloody reeks.

(Toby crying softly)

CLEMENS: Toby?

(crying softly)

Huck was a good dog, son.

I’m sorry.

It wasn’t just Huckleberry.

I promised the captain I– It was my job to look after them.

The animals, I mean.

I– I promised the captain.

Toby… sometimes things go wrong, no matter what we promise.

There are things in this world that we can’t control, but we do our best. Hmm?

Thanks, Mr. Clemens.

(Dracula growling)

(Clemens grunts)

The skies are angry.

CLEMENS: The skies feel nothing, my friend.

It’s precipitation and air pressure, as knowable as the workings of this ship.

I saw something last night.

There is something unnatural on board with us.

I’m afraid I don’t believe in superstitions, Mr. Olgaren.

I believe in science and in nature.

And in Saint Nicholas, since Joseph wouldn’t give me food otherwise.

Keep your science.

I saw your face in the dark last night.

You saw it, same as I.

ELIOT: 16th of July.

Rough weather last three days and all hands busy with sails.

Our ship’s doctor continues to administer regular transfusions to our stowaway, yet her condition remains unchanged.

Food is running sparse, men downcast, and now past Cape Matapan, we’ve more than two weeks to travel.

(speaking Romani quietly)

TOBY: Her name is Anna.

CLEMENS: She told you that?

Has she been awake?

Mr. Olgaren taught me some Romani.

She speaks some English sometimes, too.

She didn’t say this one so much, but… I don’t think she’s having very nice dreams.

She repeats a word over and over.

(Toby speaks Romani)

“Feed.”

(wheel creaking)

JOSEPH: Can’t sleep?

You noticed it, too, then.

Still quiet.

I was checking the larder. They’re all gone.

Gone? What do you mean gone?

I mean what I say. Gone.

Always a dozen or so in the woodwork, screeching, scrabbling.

Well, if… if Huck went rabid, perhaps, before the livestock, he drove them off…

You could burn this ship to the keel, Mr. Clemens, and the rats would just nest in the ashes.

Something drove them off.

A boat without rats, such a thing is against nature.

(loud thump in distance)

Playing some kind of fool’s joke.

Idiots playing games, huh?

(mutters in Russian)

(quiet groaning, retching)

(quiet groaning continues)

(quiet wheezing)

(groaning continues)

Where the hell did you come from?

(gasping weakly)

(neck snaps)

(whimpering weakly)

(soft thump)

(bell clanging)

(flesh ripping)

ELIOT: The knife was found here?

And the wheel was tied off?

Petrofsky must have been drunk.

Slipped on the deck and (scoffs) fell overboard.

Right after he bled all over the deck?

And what were you doing up in the middle of the night?

You had his knife in your hand when we found you.

Of course. II killed him.

And somehow managed to keep myself free of all the blood you see staining the boards, then I rang the signal bell to report myself.

It’s quite brilliant, innit, Mr. Wojchek?

Openandshut case.

(panting softly)

Captain, the dog’s body, I examined it.

It wasn’t killed in the larder like the other animals.

It had bite marks on its neck. All the animals did.

ELIOT: What exactly are you suggesting, Mr. Clemens?

CLEMENS: I don’t know, sir,

but their arteries were ripped open, and then they…

(whispers): He’s here.

He is here.

We have to get off this boat. Now!

All of us! We have to get off this boat!

Mr. Clemens, restrain your patient.

(Anna shouting)

Now! He will kill us all!

Please! Anna, please!

Anna, please! Please!

Kill us all!

Get off the boat. (sobbing)

(Toby panting)

(Anna crying)

Captain will say a few words from the good book, and we’ll get on with things.

There’s not enough liquor on board to get Petrofsky drunk enough to fall off…

Mr. Abrams.

Are we not gonna listen to the lass and what she just…

I’ll spend no more time discussing anything but the state of this boat and the weather.

Understood, Mr. Abrams? Get to work.

ELIOT: 18th of July.

Men reported in the morning that one of the crew, Petrofsky, was missing.

I had the men do a thorough search of the ship.

This after Olgaren confided that he had seen something strange nights before.

CLEMENS: These blood transfusions should keep your infection under control.

So, what were you trying to tell us out there?

He is here on the ship.

He has been all along.

(Clemens scoffs)

I can’t help you if you don’t speak to me and tell me what happened, why we found you below deck.

It is spoken in my village of an evil that lives in the mountains above.

A castle older than any of us.

An evil that appears as a man when it wants to hide its true nature.

And at night, he feeds on the blood of the innocent.

I have lived in the shadow of that castle my whole life.

I knew that the elders, they… they made bargains for the safety of our people.

You were given to this man?

It is not a man.

Then an animal?

No, it is not some mindless animal either.

Do not make that mistake.

We call him Dracula.

And youyou believe that he brought you on board?

ANNA: He brought me here to feed.

He is here, Mr. Clemens.

The thing that wears the skin of a man.

In the night, it drinks our blood, and he is on this ship.

Which means that we will never leave it.

The woman, she seems harmless, but… ever since she came on board, I wonder if… if we would have been better just to let the ocean have her.

But then I think about my daughter.

She’s around her age and… smart andand pretty.

(soft whoosh)

(quiet hissing)

What’s wrong? I heard your knock.

(Larsen grunts)

(screaming)

Please, no!

Please, no.

(ship creaking loudly)

(grunts, yells)

WOJCHEK: Pull, you bastards!

Where the devil is Larsen?!

Larsen! Larsen!

ABRAMS: Larsen!

That’s it. (grunts)

Olgaren, where’s Larsen?

Olgaren. Hey.

CLEMENS: There he is.

(shouts) Hold him!

ELIOT: 24th of July.

There seems some doom over the ship, already a hand short entering the Bay of Biscay with wild weather ahead.

And last night, a second man lost and another man injured.

A strange injury.

Men all in a panic of fear.

We are 18 days at sea.

The closest port is England.

We must put our trust in God and go forward.

(soft clatter)

CLEMENS: He’s cold as ice.

He makes noises and he moves, but his eyes won’t open.

Like he’s unable to wake from some dream.

But what happened to his neck?

And what was he doing in the rigging?

Anything could have happened.

Perhaps some rigging wrapped around his throat.

No. No, no, no.

This looks like a bite.

It looks like the same bites we saw in the animals, the same bites that ravaged the girl in the carpenter’s shed.

WOJCHEK: You think some devil did this?

Like she says?

I… do not.

But something did.

And that is real and on board, whether we choose to believe in it or not.

From now on, I want two men for every watch, armed.

No exceptions.

Search the ship, Mr. Wojchek.

Not just the hold.

Everywhere.

(Clemens grunting)

All right, Toby.

You have quite the task.

A captain… (sighs) is only as good as his spyglass.

Can I trust you to shine it up for me?

If it’s too much to…

I mean, no, sir.

I can do it, I swear.

(door opens)

I’ll be back soon.

Toby, lock the door.

(Abrams breathing heavily)

ABRAMS: I don’t like this.

Sun’s going down, and he’ll be coming.

(Olgaren grunting)

(rapid thumping)

(rapid thumping continues)

(breathes sharply)

(low growling in distance)

(breath shudders)

(door creaks)

(door creaking)

(door clanking)

(ragged breathing)

(slow footsteps)

Mr. Olgaren, you’re up.

(wheezing softly)

Mister…?

(Toby yells)

(fabric rips)

(ragged breathing outside)

Mr. Olgaren, will you please go away?

(bang on door)

(banging continues)

(whimpers): Please.

That’s every mast.

Any other strokes of genius, Mr. Clemens?

(quiet knocking)

Do you hear that?

(quiet knocking continues faster)

(knocking grows louder)

Oh, my God.

(frantic knocking)

TOBY: Help!

CLEMENS: Toby! Toby!

CLEMENS: Help! (grunting)

DRACULA (whispers): Toby.

ELIOT: Open the door!

(breath hissing)

(pounding on door)

Toby, open the door.

Open the door!

Open the door.

(Olgaren yelling)

Open the Toby! Toby!

CLEMENS: Toby!

ELIOT: Toby!

CLEMENS: I can’t reach the lock.

(grunts) Toby!

Toby! Toby!

(gasping, whimpering)

ELIOT: Toby! Toby!

(pounding continues)

(Anna gasps)

Toby. Toby.

ELIOT: You will be fine, my boy.

Everything will be fine.

Mr. Clemens will take care of us.

ELIOT: August 1st.

We must be past the Strait of Dover.

Still five days to London.

God seems to have deserted us, and we are drifting to some terrible doom.

Lord help us.

He’s mad.

As if possessed.

JOSEPH: Possessed by that beast?

Oh, no, no.

Not in the way you mean, at least.

It’s like a poison or… an infection.

WOJCHEK: Infection?

Not like any I’ve ever seen.

I can feel it.

Can you hear me?

I can hear everything.

The blood pumping in your veins.

Burn? Maybe he needs some water.

(groans) It burns.

(pained grunting)

CLEMENS: Olgaren?

OLGAREN: Burns.

It burns! It burns!

(quiet sizzling)

It burns! (yells)

(pained grunt)

(screaming continues)

(screaming stops)

Oh, for God’s sake.

Will someone say something?

What the hell happened to him?

I warned you.

I warned all you, didn’t I?

It is a punishment brought down for our sins.

Petrofsky, a criminal.

Olgaren, gypsy heathen.

A whoremonger, a lecher.

And from Gomorrah herself…

Oh, will you shut the hell up, you bleedin’ idiot!

Abrams, take the morning watch.

And, Joseph, you are to relieve him when he’s…

That child will be the next to rise up from death.

Satan’s black blood pumping corruption through his veins.

God’s anger has come upon this vessel like Jonah…

Just shut it up!

See to the supplies.

Whatever was in Olgaren… it’s fair to assume it is in the boy.

He has all the same symptoms.

But your blood transfusions saved the girl.

He’s smaller. He’s weaker.

The wound was worse, and the blood loss is greater.

Just… I don’t know. I think, uh… I think we might have to start discussing…

WOJCHEK: Go on.

Look him in the eye when you do it.

That’s not what I meant. That is not what I meant.

It has to be hiding here. If we can find it, I think we might be able to figure out a way to save him…

Are you sure the boy is the one that’s on your mind?

Get to your bunk.

We’re running out of men for the watch at this rate.

You’re going to open the crates, aren’t you?

Go back to the shed and bolt the door.

We are all trapped on the same ship, Mr. Clemens.

Are you forgetting it needs to feed because you saved me?

I’m coming with you.

This thing has killed most the crew.

Then imagine what it will do if we let it get to London.

Let’s go.

If we do find your devil, will bullets kill it?

He has controlled my village for generations.

Do you think I have any notion how to kill him?

(Clemens grunts, inhales sharply)

I never liked guns.

I want you to have…

Let’s see. Sixth of July.

Private cargo consigned for Carfax Abbey in London.

Doesn’t say the owner.

(inhales sharply)

(sharp thump)

He told Jonah, and he was spared.

He was spared.

“I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.”

(boat creaking)

“For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.”

CLEMENS: Why London?

ANNA: Because in my country, there is no one left to feed on.

Let’s start with this one.

It’s nothing but dirt.

(crowbar clanking)

(chuckles) Nothing.

ANNA: This one looks different.

(both grunting)

ANNA: Look.

We have found where the devil sleeps.

(wind whistles softly)

(heavy flapping)

(Joseph gasping softly)

DRACULA (whispering): “I cried, and you heard my voice.”

Oh, Lord…

DRACULA: Oh, Lord.

Oh, God. (crying softly)

DRACULA: Oh, God.

(bell clanging in distance)

ABRAMS: Hey! The starboard lifeboat’s gone!

WOJCHEK: Abrams, do you see it?

No. There’s nothing here.

(Wojchek gasps)

(softly): No.

(door thumps)

Sir, not supposing you heard?

You would have made a good captain, Mr. Wojchek.

(sighs) If we had just seen London.

(footsteps approaching)

Mr. Wojchek.

How’s Toby? Shall I bring him some…

What the hell is happening on this ship?!

CLEMENS: Captain Eliot.

We’ve, uh…

we’ve wrapped Toby’s body in canvas, sir.

We’re a doomed crew, Mr. Clemens.

On a doomed ship.

We no longer plot our course.

The devil below does.

And we all know where he plans to deliver us.

To hell, Mr. Clemens.

Each of us, one by one.

(Wojchek sniffles)

Dear Lord…

…take this sweet boy.

May he never again be hungry, never be cold… never be scared.

This world is cruel and uncaring.

May Toby find his next home to be a kinder one.

I saw him move. He’s alive.

CLEMENS: Captain Eliot, the boy has no breath in his body.

He has no heartbeat. He’s gone.

Uh… Captain, you should sit.

I tell you, he’s alive. He moved.

CLEMENS: Captain Eliot, please.

(Toby and Eliot screaming)

(Eliot sighs)

CLEMENS (quietly): Mr. Wojchek, can I… can I speak with you?

We have a plan. If we can…

You seen what I seen and you still want to plan.

This ain’t Cambridge, astronomer.

You can’t think your way out of this one.

I was one of the first Black doctors to graduate from Cambridge with medical degree.

Have I told you that?

Well, that’s very nice for you…

I applied to all the best hospitals in the country.

Immediately, I was told there were no positions available.

I fought tooth and nail for my education, and yet no one would let me practice it.

Finally, I was offered a position by post.

Royal physician to King Carol the First of Romania.

My name, it reached them somehow.

But the color of my skin, it would later seem, had not.

Captain Eliot once asked me over dinner what I most desired.

I told him I wanted the world to make sense.

I need this world to make sense, Mr. Wojchek.

This beast and mark my words, it is a beast deep down, I need it to make sense, too.

I need to know why it is the way it is and why it does what it does.

And then I will remind the beast that it, like the world, has absolutely no hold over me.

And then I want to kill the cursed thing.

If we barricade this cabin, we are a day from London with this wind.

Can’t set more sail, crew what it is.

CLEMENS: What, you want us to wait around, eyes in the dark, served up and ready for dinner?

WOJCHEK: It ran from our guns in the night.

It won’t risk an outright attack.

ANNA: Running?

It’s…

It was not running.

(gun clicking)

It was rationing.

(gun racks)

One a night.

Once we had hit open waters and could no longer make port.

It hid below deck, sustaining off Anna until then.

But now it has us right where it wants us, doesn’t it?

Like he said, London’s only a day away.

It no longer needs us.

So we have to kill it before it reaches the coast.

ABRAMS: Kill it?

We can’t even find it.

No, we can’t.

It is why we’re to set a trap.

We must sink the ship.

With him on it.

Scuttle the Demeter?

Have you gone mad?!

CLEMENS: She’s right.

We set up an ambush and leave it on the sinking ship.

Then we can escape on one of the lifeboats.

If the course is right, we should be able to make shore.

This is my home.

And I won’t tear her apart for this fucking thing!

I grew up on a boat, Mr. Wojchek.

Just like this one.

My father was a deckhand his whole life.

He always told me that the… the ship, the living part, is the men on board.

The stories.

Everything else is just timber and nails.

She’s mine.

It’s going to be me.

CLEMENS: We barricade the hold, so that he only has one way out on deck.

As night falls, Anna will be at the helm.

When it comes for her, we’ll have a clear shot from the crow’s nest.

We sink the ship and send the wounded beast to a watery grave.

(hissing breath echoing)

ELIOT: 21 July.

Fourth August.

It dare not touch You got to get Toby home.

1830…

No, uh, people need to know.

Uh, logs. There needs to be a record.

The Demet is lost, sir.

We’re abandoning ship.

Abandoning ship?

Mr. Wojchek’s below deck making preparations as we speak.

We’ll leave the beast a sinking ship as a farewell gift. (gasps)

He comes to me.

He whispers to me behind my own eyes.

He can bring Toby back.

He took him away. He can bring him back.

Captain, come to your senses.

You know that’s not possible.

Toby… (breathing heavily)

I just need to bring the Demeter to shore.

I’m sorry, Mr. Clemens.

ANNA: Captain.

You have seen him as I have.

You know deep down that is not all.

(breath shuddering)

When I dream, sometimes…

I remember who I was.

Before him.

But most often, I think of the box he kept me in.

How every time he came for me and tore into my flesh, drank his fill, dirt would seep into the fresh wound, filling me up.

You cannot sink the Demeter.

Picture Toby’s face.

His smile, his laugh.

And think of that dirt filling him up, too, because that’s what the devil does.

He takes what is good and what you love, and he… he uses it, and he twists it, and he rots it from within.

Do not let him do that to the memory of your boy.

I will… I will sail the ship out to sea.

And when she finally goes… the monster will never be able to reach the home I knew.

That Toby knew.

Captain, there’s no need for you to stay on board the Demeter.

Where would I go, Mr. Clemens?

ABRAMS: Do you think this’ll work?

ABRAMS: There she is.

The shores of England.

And looks like there’s a storm blowing in.

Keep your eyes on the deck.

(breath hisses softly)

I can’t see a bloody thing.

You don’t need to be here.

You could stay below deck with Captain Eliot.

We are connected, the devil and I.

You are smart enough to have noticed.

I can sense him.

Feel him somehow.

He feels it, too.

He will come for me.

And while he’s focused on me, you know what to do.

ABRAMS: Where the bloody hell is it?

CLEMENS: What is it?

He knows, Mr. Clemens.

CLEMENS: Dear God. It has wings.

It’s coming!

Please, Wojchek! Wojchek, help me!

(straining)

For God’s sake, cut it!

(Dracula screeches)

(wind whistling)

(exhales sharply)

(flapping and hissing stop)

We’re coming!

WOJCHEK: No! Get the lifeboat ready!

(breath hisses)

CLEMENS: Go!

We have to hurry! We’re close to the shore!

ANNA: We need Wojchek! And the captain!

CLEMENS: I’ll find ’em!

Cut the ropes if you have to, but get it free!

Forgive me.

(ax striking)

(grunts) Wojchek!

(grunts, gasps)

Where are you?

CLEMENS: Captain!

He’s coming. He’s coming!

Oh, my Lord.

I renounce you, devil!

I renounce you…

Mr. Clemens.

Let them know, will you?

Let them know I was true… to my trust.

I will, Captain. I promise.

You want them to believe that you’re a god!

You and I both know that you’re not!

You bleed like any of us!

You sleep in dirt!

Above all else, you feed!

You want us to… to fear you!

Underneath, you’re afraid!

You’re afraid of what lies on the other side as any other living thing!

(screeches)

(inhales deeply, screeches)

You are in my head.

In my blood.

You have damned me to hell!

(Anna gasping)

(muffled screaming)

You bastard!

(pained howling)

Anna, get to the boat.

I do not… f– fear you.

Die, you devil!

(screeching)

BOY: What’s wrong?

Run and fetch the constable.

Tell him there’s a ship trying to get through the breakers.

The coast… so close.

(whispers): It’s close.

I have known for days now.

Another transfusion…

Would only delay the inevitable.

We both know that.

But I can… I can…

If I just…

I don’t want to become…

My whole life… my people, the devil, they chose for me.

I choose this.

No one else.

You saved me.

And you me.

BOY: It’s all about the ghost ship at Whitby.

No survivors.

How about you, sir?

Would you like The Dailygraph ?

Get your paper here, only a cost of a tuppence.

It’s all about the ghost ship at Whitby.

CLEMENS: I’ve arrived in London.

The creature hunts for blood somewhere in the city, but I know where it lays to rest during the day.

BARMAID: Carfax Abbey?

You the new owner?

CLEMENS: No, miss. Just looking for him.

Oh, well, it’s a couple hours to reach the abbey in a carriage from here.

It gets dark on the moors.

If I was you, I’d wait till morning.

You know, miss, I was thinking the same thing.

CLEMENS: I have finally seen the true darkness that dwells beneath the surface of this world, the evil that neither science nor reason can explain.

Yet I have also seen its beauty and those willing to give all to protect it.

(knocks in distance)

(sharp knocks)

(sharp knock)

(breath hissing softly)

(growling softly)

CLEMENS: And so I will pursue this foul beast.

And I swear by those who have given their lives that I will extinguish this blight and send it back to hell.

(music ends)

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter

There have been many adaptations of Bram Stoker’s iconic Dracula, but never before has there been one singularly focused on just one chapter. One of the most terrifying pieces of the novel comes to life with The Last Voyage of the Demeter - an uneven but overall frightening and entertaining new entry in the Dracula lore. On Blu-ray with a respectable video transfer and an excellent Atmos track, makes you ask - where’s the 4K? Probably coming soon, maybe, so for now - Worth A Look

A terrifying new addition to the Dracula legend, based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker's classic novel, The Last Voyage of the Demeter chronicles the doomed journey of a merchant ship ferrying 50 mysterious wooden crates from Carpathia to London. As they set sail, the crew soon discover they are not alone on board: at night they are stalked by a hidden passenger whose monstrous thirst for blood turns the trip into a harrowing nightmare of tension, terror and unfathomable evil.

Special Features:

• ALTERNATE OPENING - Commentary available with Director André Øvredal and Producer Bradley J. Fischer
• DELETED SCENES - Commentary available with Director André Øvredal and Producer Bradley J. Fischer
• Clemens Picking up a Stone in Varna
• Bosphorus and Constantinople
• Clemens Following Huck's Blood Trail
• Clemens and Anna Talk on Deck
• Crew Discuss Where the Beast Is Hiding
• Finding the Corpses in the Crate
• Wojchek Finds the Captain
• Clemens Visits His Father's Grave
• FROM THE PITS OF HELL: DRACULA REIMAGINED - Learn how the creative team behind THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER conjured a new nightmare.
• EVIL IS ABOARD: THE MAKING OF THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER - Set sail for an exclusive journey inside the making of the movie with the filmmakers and cast.
• DRACULA & THE DIGITAL AGE - Visual effects supervisor Brad Parker leads a detailed look at the imaginative work that adds fresh layers of fear to Dracula, creates realistic water, and enhances scenery with bleeding-edge VFX.
• FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH DIRECTOR ANDRÉ ØVREDAL AND PRODUCER BRADLEY J. FISCHER

Storyline: Our Reviewer's Take

With so many interpretations of Bram Stoker’s iconic vampire, it’s difficult for filmmakers to come up with anything new or exciting for Dracula. He’s been the mark of true horror. He’s been played by Jack Palance. He’s been killed and restored to life countless times. He’s sometimes depicted as a sexpot bo-hunk and also depicted as a demonic beast. Adaptations of his story have run wild from thin-but-faithful overviews of the plot to dramatically changing the entire vibe of horror into a tragic romance. But thanks to director André Øvredal, one of the most chilling chapters of the book isn’t simply glossed over for time, but treated as a feature all its own with The Last Voyage of the Demeter . It may be a little too long and a little too uneven leading into the final act, but the film brings the Prince of Darkness back to being a terrifying beast with some genuinely creepy, scary, moments of terror. 

Starring Corey Hawkins as wayward Dr. Clemens, he’s traveled the world and is desperately trying to book passage home to London from deep in the wilds of Romania. The only ship available is the Demeter, a vessel chartered to carry a very special cargo to England, but Captain Elliot (Liam Cunningham), his grandson Toby (Woody Norman), and his second in command Wojchek (David Dastmalchian) have no need for a man like Clemens. When superstitious crewmen abandon their postings at the sight of the insignia adorning the cargo, Hawkins is given a chance to prove himself as a deckhand and ship’s doctor. Little does he know his skills as a doctor would be given practical application on the voyage when a creature of nightmare and legend starts feasting on the crew one by one. 

Now, it’d be very simple to cast off The Last Voyage of the Demeter as a simple Alien rehash but with Dracula (or IT! The Terror from Beyond Space if you want to get prickly about it). The two films have any number of similarities, none the least of which are the “Average Joe” crewmen being picked off by a beast that lurks in the shadows. But what this film does so well is steep the audience in a unique terrifying location. The belly of a freighter traveling at the whims of the weather with no chance for escape is just as chilling as the infinite expanse of space. Even when a character does the “smart thing” and attempts to leave, the beast has other plans and won’t be denied his meal! The key characters we care about are well-drawn and relatable making them an essential asset for feeling the terror they’re experiencing. And our beastly take on Dracula is certainly effective for some damned creepy imagery. The most horrifying moments aren’t even with the vampire, but what he’s done to some of the crew!

For me, where the film stumbles quite a bit is with certain character management and pacing. At just under two hours, there’s a lot of padding that doesn’t need to be there, especially as the survivors gear up for their big plan in the third act. Characters who had all but five words in the first 90 minutes all of a sudden are sputtering out their entire backstory. By that point, if you can’t identify who that character is by name, there’s no point in that speech. They're meat for the grinder. The audience is all amped up ready for the big trap to be set into motion and their fight for survival to begin. Instead, everyone sits down to chat and wait for the sun to set. Talk about sucking the wind out of the sails. Another aspect that didn’t really fit is a little coda that’s just tacked on like an attempt to set up a sequel that probably won’t come - or is even warranted given the characters involved. They're clunky issues that keep the film from greatness but don't completely sink the voyage either. 

André Øvredal and his writers had a big task ahead of them adapting a small section of the novel. Overall, I liked what they did and where they went with it. Dracula can be a pretty stale character if not handled correctly. They can’t all be Nicolas Cage ! The Last Voyage of the Demeter earns its points by capturing a perfect atmosphere of dread and terror with a beastly vision of Dracula that was thankfully largely captured by practical makeup, costumes, and puppets with minimal CGI trickery for enhancements. Often it’s the use of what you don’t see that makes the film as scary as what it’s showing you that makes this particular Dracula so memorable. Our key cast is also excellent with Corey Hawkins standing tall as our man of science and reason while David Dastmalchian stands tall on his own. Liam Cunningham as the Captain often overtakes the show giving the narration that perfect sense of foreboding while desperately working to save his ship and crew from their dark fates. I truly feel a tighter edit, especially in the lead-up to the final act and this film would experience a fair-weather voyage. 

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray Once again forgoing a 4K release, Universal unleashes a perfect candidate for the format with  The Last Voyage of the Demeter  onto Blu-ray only with a two-disc Blu-ray + DVD + Digital release. The film is pressed on a BD-50 disc, and the included digital copy is Movies Anywhere compatible. The discs are housed in a two-disc case, my copy didn’t come with a slipcover when ordered.

Video Review

I saw this film in theaters and it certainly is a very dark film. Considering the iconic vampire, that’s not surprising. However, in theaters, the darkness was watchable and effective whereas this Blu-ray at times borders on impenetrably dark obscuring some exciting details or imagery. There are a few key sequences within the cargo hold where Dracula lurks deep in the shadows just out of visual range, it’s subtle but he’s there, and in theaters, it was damned creepy. On this 1080p disc, those scenes struggled. Unless the glint in his eyes was shown, you wouldn’t know what the camera was looking at. So that’s the downside of this release. The upside is that given our human cast of characters, there’s plenty of daylight action. Details generally look markedly better in those moments with clean lines and textures. This is where I do hope we get a really good 4K Upgrade with a respectable HDR grading. In theaters the whole film looked great. The Blu-ray, on the other hand, parts of it look really good with a lot of key scenes just not making the cut.

Audio Review

On the audio side, the best aspect of this disc is the Atmos audio mix. Given the location of a creepy ship, the filmmakers and sound team came up with a very cool series of tricks to evoke that feeling of isolation and creepiness. My favorite is a knocking scheme where someone bangs on the side of the boat and another crewmember knocks back. It gives a sense of imaging and also very effectively uses the surround and height channels. Likewise when our favorite vampire is creeping around, the sound of leathery moving skin slips and slides around beautifully. Dialog is clean and clear without issue. Given the creeks and groans of the rocking ship, LFE gets some pretty choice moments for impact. Scoring by Bear McCreary is also effectively moody knowing well when to keep to the silence and let the anticipation of the scare feed the audience instead of knocking them over the head with music cues. All around an excellent Atmos track.

Special Features

On the bonus features front, fans can sink their teeth into a pretty healthy assortment of extras. The Audio Commentary with André Øvredal and producer Bradley J. Fischer. The pair remain relatively active and engaged throughout discussing the project’s origins, shooting in their various locations, and assembling their cast. It can sound a little back-patty at times but otherwise a good listen. The various production featurettes may be brief, but they’re at least informative digging into key aspects of the production without just being talking-head nonsense. The incomplete alternate opening is pretty cool and would have been a pretty slick way to start the flick. Given my complaint that the film is already too long for pacing issues, the deleted scenes are interesting to see what could have been added. I don’t think they would have helped but still worthwhile viewing. 

• Audio Commentary featuring André Øvredal and Bradley J. Fischer
• From the Pits of Hell: Dracula Reimagined
• Evil is Abroad: The Making of The Last Voyage of the Demeter
• Dracula and the Digital Age
• Alternate Opening
• Deleted Scenes

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is one of those interestingly clever new takes on a familiar horror character that doesn’t quite live up to its ambitions. This short piece of the novel is the perfect candidate for its own scare show, but frustratingly gets overstuffed with dead weight. A tighter edit and a little more care and attention to when a character's story comes out might have yielded a a more fruitful bloody harvest out of this terrific high-concept version of Bram Stoker’s terrifying creation. Slight mediocrity aside, I still had a fun time with this one, even if it’s not the best big-screen Dracula we saw in 2023. And again we’re left waiting and wondering where the 4K disc could possibly be? The film looks good enough in 1080p but given how many scenes are steeped in deep shadows and darkness, full 4K with HDR would do wonders for the visuals. At least the Atmos track is excellent and the bonus features are worth the time. But until that 4K disc gets announced, albeit if , I can’t help but call this one Worth A Look

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10 Recent Movies Ruined By Their Marketing

6. the last voyage of the demeter.

Compared to every other film on this list, The Last Voyage of the Demeter's marketing gaffe was almost hilariously simple, and it's truly baffling that Universal didn't see it coming.

The vampire film, adapted from a chapter of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, was stuck with a clunky, unappealing title which immediately sold it to few. What the hell is the Demeter? And more to the point, why isn't the word "Dracula" in the title?

In some international markets the film was actually given the more fitting title of Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter, but domestically its mistitling ensured it mustered little interest there, grossing just $13.6 million in North America against a $45 million budget.

Granted, it didn't really do any better internationally either, but this so-so horror flick wasn't even given a fighting chance right out of the gate with such a lousy title.

Considering the movie offered up one of the all-time most terrifying screen renditions of Dracula, what a shame that so few actually bothered to see it.

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.

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Upcoming dracula movie is doomed based on new $28 million horror film with 83% rt score.

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Jason statham's next action movie will redeem his $50 million box office bomb, christopher nolan’s new remake has a perfect lead role for 1 actor he's not worked with since 2017.

• Vampire movies are losing money at the box office, posing a risk for upcoming film "Nosferatu" despite its star-studded cast.
• Director Robert Eggers' unique style may hurt "Nosferatu's" chances of success, as his previous films have not been huge commercial hits.
• If "Nosferatu" flops, it could signal a decline in vampire and monster movies in Hollywood, impacting future projects in the genre.

Despite the fact 2024's Nosferatu has a star-studded cast and plenty of audience anticipation, the movie may not be as successful as previously hoped due to recent box office trends when it comes to vampire movies. Nosferatu is a horror mystery movie directed by Robert Eggers and starring Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe, Lily-Rose Depp, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Based on the 1922 German film of the same name, Nosferatu follows the passionate and toxic relationship between a young woman and a horrifying vampire. This is the third remake of Nosferatu, which was originally inspired by Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Robert Eggers' Nosferatu has been in development since 2015, after Eggers directed A24's The Witch, and anticipation has been high ever since. Furthermore, the film has only received more hype with the announcement of its cast, which is full of huge stars both in and out of the horror genre. Overall, Nosferatu is on track to be a major release for 2024, and a movie audiences should definitely be watching out for. However, even with all of these benefits, recent happenings at the box office imply that Nosferatu may not be as lucky as previously thought.

Abigail Is The Third Straight Vampire Movie To Underperform At The Box Office

Vampire movies are failing at the box office.

Although Nosferatu has many good things going for it, the movie may suffer anyway. Recently, the last three big vampire movies to hit the big screen underperformed . In April 2023, the horror comedy Renfield earned only $26 million on a $65 million budget. A few months later, the same happened to The Last Voyage of Demeter, which earned a measly $21 million against its $45 million budget. And now, in April 2024, Abigail's box office has managed to surpass its notably low budget of $28 million but only by a hair, earning $31 million at this time.

What is particularly worrisome about these box office stats is that all three of these movies were well-received . Renfield earned a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes, while The Last Voyage of Demeter earned a 75%, and Abigail an 85%. Those who are seeing these vampire movies are enjoying them, but unfortunately, not enough people are actually going to the movie theater to watch them , keeping their box office numbers dismal.

This discrepancy between box office numbers and critical acclaim means that audiences may dismiss a movie due to its box office when, in reality, it may be a very entertaining film.

Nosferatu Was Already A Box Office Risk Before Abigail

Robert eggers is controversial.

Nosferatu faces another big problem aside from the vampire box office trend. Despite its amazing cast and iconic story, Nosferatu's director puts the movie at a disadvantage. Although Robert Eggers movies have been very notable and critically acclaimed like The Witch and The Lighthouse, his movies are not necessarily the most commercially successful. Typically, Eggers' films call to a very specific type of audience, those who enjoy very dark and mysterious movies that burn slowly. In this way, not everyone love Eggers' style, and this could seriously hurt Nosferatu's chances at the box office in December.

A great example of this phenomenon is Robert Eggers' most recent movie, The Northman. Like Nosferatu, the 2022 movie enjoyed a star-studded cast including Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, and Willem Dafoe . It also did fairly well with critics and audiences, scoring a 64% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, The Northman notably underperformed at the box office. On a budget of $70-90 million, the movie only grossed $69 million . In this way, Robert Eggers had a movie with many variables going for it, however, based on his style of filmmaking, audiences were not intrigued enough to visit theaters.

Nosferatu's Box Office Could Be Final Nail In Dracula's Coffin

Vampire movies could see a long hiatus.

In the event that Nosferatu experiences the same fate as the last three vampire movies to be released in theaters, this would have a massive effect on vampire movies as a whole . Nosferatu has a headstart over these previous vampire movies due to its iconic story, so if it manages to flop at the box office, this will be very telling about how audiences feel about vampire films at this time. If Nosferatu does not have a good box office performance, then it seems likely that vampire movies will be put on the backburner for the time being .

Nosferatu is set to premiere on December 25, 2024.

Nosferatu's failure could also be telling for other monster movies coming in the future. There is a Frankenstein reboot and a Wolfman reboot both coming in the next year or two, and if Nosferatu does not manage to captivate audiences, then other monster remakes may be at risk as well . Hollywood currently has a monster movie trend taking place, and unfortunately, audiences may not be ready for it. Hopefully though, Nosferatu can prove that the vampire, and the monster movie, are both still valuable to audiences.

• Nosferatu (2024)

A new king of horror is coming to haunt you

With ‘Late Night With the Devil,’ actor David Dastmalchian is cementing his status as the genre’s next Vincent Price

TORONTO — If ever someone were born to play a vampire, it’s David Dastmalchian, who opens the door to his temporary Edwardian-style home looking like a steampunk Nosferatu. Black linen duster. Chipped black nail polish. Black hair swept skyward from that angular, haunting face you’ll recognize from dozens of small but memorable movie roles.

Dracula socks. Okay, maybe that one’s a little too on the nose.

Had the star of the horror-comedy hit “Late Night With the Devil” — a found-footage flick about a ’70s talk show host who opens a door to hell on live TV — dressed on theme? “No, no, no, this is just David,” he says, laughing.

Dastmalchian is in the midst of what he describes as “one of the most, if not the most, resoundingly incredible and rewarding professional years of my career.” The night of the Oscars, he was in Los Angeles celebrating the triumphant “Oppenheimer” (he plays William Borden, who wrote a letter to the FBI accusing the titular physicist of being a Soviet agent). By 5 a.m., he was on a plane to Toronto to start filming a central role as a hacker in “Murderbot,” a sci-fi series for Apple TV Plus starring Alexander Skarsgård as an android. And three days after that, he was in New York to open “Late Night With the Devil,” a collaboration with Australian directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes and Dastmalchian’s first leading role in a movie he didn’t write. It became an out-0f-nowhere mainstream hit, selling out multiplexes, earning an eerie $666,666 its first Sunday in theaters and recording the best-ever opening weekend for its distributor, IFC Films.

Dastmalchian plays Jack Delroy, a wannabe Johnny Carson who’s made an unfortunate deal with the occult in a desperate effort to raise his show’s ratings. The entire movie takes place over a single disastrous, and gruesomely funny, Halloween broadcast featuring a parapsychologist working with a teenage girl possessed by a demon.

Stephen King declared it “absolutely brilliant.” It’s since made $11.1 million on a $3 million budget, with positive reviews from horror and mainstream critics alike. (It’s still in theaters and, in mid-April, became the highest-watched debut in the history of the horror streaming service Shudder.)

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL: I got a screener. It's absolutely brilliant. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Your results may vary, as they say, but I urge you to watch it when you can. — Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 26, 2023

In many ways, this feels like the start of a new chapter for Dastmalchian, 48, who seems poised to become the new king of horror — a go-to actor for fright films in the vein of Vincent Price, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

“What made Vincent Price so special was that he took the genre seriously and he acted so intensely and beautifully and I think he recognized that the genre can be a way of expressing very human experiences … like grief and trauma,” says Sam Zimmerman, Shudder’s vice president of programming. “And David reminds me of that.”

What separates Dastmalchian from his cohort, beyond his soulful performances, are those striking looks that have led to an impressive career of playing creeps. “I have a love-hate relationship with my face,” Dastmalchian says, fiddling with a water bottle adorned with stickers of the Bride of Frankenstein and Taylor Swift (courtesy of his wife and daughter; he also has a son). “I’m not going to be a matinee idol. And that’s okay.”

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You may remember him as a paranoid schizophrenic acolyte of the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.” Tortured superhero Polka-Dot Man in “The Suicide Squad.” Pompadoured Russian cybercriminal Kurt in “Ant-Man.” And a favorite of director Denis Villeneuve, who’s killed him off brutally in three films: as a suspected child-abductor in “Prisoners”; a quickly dispatched morgue worker in “Blade Runner 2049”; and bald, red-lipped psychopath Piter de Vries, henchman to Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen in “Dune.”

Villeneuve has joked that Dastmalchian is the first person he thinks of when he has a character who needs to die a miserable death and calls him “an incredibly versatile and tremendously inspiring artist.” The director first noticed him in “The Dark Knight,” and says by email, “I’m fascinated by his range and by the mad poetry he brings on screen.”

It’s in horror, though, that a respected character actor like Dastmalchian, often cast as a bone-chilling sadist, can become a leading man.

I ’m not sure there’s anyone like David circulating at the moment,” says Phil Nobile Jr., editor in chief of Fangoria . “No one looks like David, no one sounds like David. And I think horror fans are taken in because they just recognize him as one of their own.”

Thirty years ago, Nobile explains, horror was considered a ghetto that legitimate actors had to claw themselves out of. It’s a sector of the industry that prints money by casting faceless (read: cheap) unknowns because, well, they usually all die by the end.

But Dastmalchian has turned more toward horror as he’s risen in prominence. He was the whistling marauder in “Bird Box” and, just before “Late Night,” could be seen in 2023’s “Boogeyman,” a Stephen King adaptation, and “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” as a sailor aboard a notoriously doomed 1897 merchant ship from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” He’s also started a production company, Good Fiend Films, geared toward creating fun, quality genre fare, which he used to help produce “Late Night.”

Dastmalchian — whose wedding ring features a carved skull and crossbones — has always gravitated toward the spooky and the gruesome. For the past three years, he’s hosted horror’s equivalent of the Oscars, the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards . He’s also the author of “Count Crowley,” a comic book about a female vampire hunter. He even became a brand ambassador for Titan Caskets (“At Titan Caskets we have an obvious interest in you dying, but we can wait”).

Even his social life is horror-tastic. He met his close friend Trent Reznor at a haunted house, and now they do board game nights together with their families. While in Toronto, he’s been hanging out with the cast from the vampire mockumentary series “What We Do in the Shadows.”

Dastmalchian jokes that it’s all part of his master plan to keep making horror films just to see “if I can get a shot someday at Dracula, because they keep putting me in vampire films and then not letting me be the f---ing vampire! I’m always fighting Dracula or getting killed by him. It makes no sense!”

@titancasket Spring forward and fall back...are two ways it could happen. Let's Bury Daylight Savings. ♬ original sound - Titan Casket

A s the youngest kid of an evangelical family in Kansas City, Kan., he wrestled from an early age with what he now understands was untreated anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation, much of it exacerbated by the bitter divorce of his parents — his father, an Iranian immigrant, was an engineer, and his mother, who could trace her ancestry to the Mayflower, worked in education. At school, he was bullied relentlessly for having vitiligo. (Kids called him “polka-dot,” which would give him unique empathy for the doomed superhero he’d later play.)

Comic books were an escape, while horror was a natural fascination, given the constant talk in their deeply religious household about the afterlife and the watchful eyes of the dead.

“Monsters were always my favorite thing,” he says. “It drove my mother crazy because horror was considered so evil.” He’d secretly check out slasher movies with his older siblings and, on Friday nights, watch a local fright fest, “Crematia’s Friday Nightmare.”

“What I love about [horror] is that, if it’s done properly, it fills the audience with so many physical, visceral experiences. … I think it helps us look down the barrel of the inevitable in a way that feels healthy, and it gives storytellers a way to wrestle with really pointed questions, like what happens when you don’t deal with grief?”

By high school, he was playing the part of a well-adjusted football player dabbling in theater on the side, even as suicidal thoughts crept into everything he did. On a different timeline, he would have gone to a Division II school on a sports scholarship. But he followed a “wild, crazy dream” to audition for the theater conservatory at DePaul University in Chicago and got a scholarship there instead.

Then, at 19, he tried heroin while hanging out with some musician friends he admired.

“It was the first time everything made sense,” he says. “It was the first time all the pain was just gone. … I was just surrounded by complete bliss.”

He thought drugs could help him create art like his hero William S. Burroughs, whom he, coincidentally, met around the time he started using and took as a sign he was on the right path. Instead, he says, “out of theater school it went right to full-time junkie and pretty quickly into homelessness.” He’d sleep in his car, shoplift, run scams where he’d raid gift tables at weddings and sell the spoils at pawnshops. At one point he was running small quantities of heroin down from Chicago into areas south of the Ozarks and taking meth back. He narrowly survived multiple serious suicide attempts and had to be institutionalized twice.

He sometimes still can’t believe he made it out. “I like the term ‘miracle,’” he says. “And I’m just filled with an ocean of gratitude.”

T he doorbell rings.

After a brief conversation with the person at the door, Dastmalchian comes back looking terrified and starts peeking out through the curtains.

It’s a moment straight out of a horror film.

“Oh my God, my heart is racing,” he says. “A very mentally ill woman just came and told me that I’m her universal husband and she’s been waiting for me.”

When he told her she had the wrong house, she smirked silently until he was forced to close the door.

Dastmalchian runs to the street to make sure she’s gone before calling the landlord, only to find out that she’d stopped by his house first. “Did she ask for David?” Dastmalchian wants to know. She had not.

She must have been on drugs — Dastmalchian knows the signs well — but still, it’s weird, and he has had a stalker before.

“I think I’ve played so many people who are mentally ill that [fans] tend to respond to me in a in a really strong way,” he says.

He takes some deep breaths: “I think my initial fear is subsiding. I think we’re safe.”

B y the time Dastmalchian got sober in his mid-20s, he was sure he’d missed his shot. “I robbed myself of prime years for an actor,” he says. He lived in a halfway house and worked odd jobs. His favorite was ushering and working concessions at a Chicago movie theater, where he’d chain smoke and watch films with the projectionists.

It was there that a couple of theater-director friends saw him and persuaded him to get back onstage. To his surprise, he was a much better actor sober.

He’d just gotten his biggest on-screen credit, in a Cingular Wireless commercial, when he joined every other character actor in Chicago at a cattle-call audition for “The Dark Knight.” He was devastated when he didn’t get cast as one of the Joker’s henchmen in the opening heist scene.

Then four months later, on a day he was heading to the unemployment office, he got a phone call. “Little did I know that they had saved a much cooler role for me and it changed my life,” he says. He’d be playing a deranged Joker fanboy who can only giggle as Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent shoves a gun into his forehead. The feeling of being on that enormous set, in the company of great actors gave him the fuel that’s carried him through all the Weirdo No. 7 roles that followed: “All you need is one person, somebody just saying, ‘Yes, you belong here. Come on in,’” he says.

The most rewarding experiences of Dastmalchian’s life, he says, are when he’s had the courage to face down his fears — which is a good thing to know about yourself, because he was racked with anxiety in 2021 as he headed to Melbourne to shoot “Late Night With the Devil.” The 1977 world of Jack Delroy, says Dastmalchian, “hinges on how well the guy at the center of the story can pull off being not only a talk-show host but a man who’s on the verge of a dissociative psychotic nervous breakdown.”

The Cairnes brothers, though, had no doubt about Dastmalchian’s abilities. They’d written him a personal letter after reading an essay he’d written in Fangoria about the comfort he’d found in the horror hosts he’d adored as a kid after his mother’s death during covid. They loved how he “is utterly compelling in everything he does, whatever the genre and however big or small the role,” says Colin Cairnes by email.

In Dastmalchian’s hands, Delroy isn’t just a comedian with a dark side, but something more frightening: a charming, ruthlessly ambitious man with nothing but emptiness beneath his mask. And there’s more horror from Dastmalchian to come. Up next, he’s in “Dust Bunny,” a horror-comedy about a little girl seeking revenge on the monster under her bed, and “The Life of Chuck,” a Stephen King adaptation about the end of the world.

“I’m building this little circus of like-minded artists where we’re trying to create genre stories that wrestle with the complicated things that I think are interesting about life,” he says.

But mostly, he’s just staring into the void and enjoying the view.

An earlier version of this article stated that David Dastmalchian was from Kansas City, Mo. He is from Kansas City, Kan. In addition, he was 19, not 24, when he first tried heroin. The article has been updated.