I saw the trailer for The Last Voyage of the Demeter and found myself intrigued. While it looked to be a boilerplate slab of Gothic horror, I like Gothic horror. And the movie just looked really good with its period sets and moody visuals.
It is apparently based on a chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula which is the log book of the captain of the Demeter that chronicles the horrors inflicted on the crew of the ship by Dracula as it sailed from Varna, Bulgaria to Ol' Blighty with its hideous cargo. I discovered that the director is André Øvredal who made the interminably fun Troll Hunter and whose The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a masterclass slowburn creepfest that I loved every minute of. And so I went in thinking that I’d get some quality scares.
And I did.
I’ve never read Dracula so I cannot say just what is and what isn’t in the book. Here, our story opens on the night of 6 August 1897 with the Demeter having run aground on the English shore. Rain pours down in buckets as a band of constables investigate the wreck and searching the ship leaves one nearly petrified by what he saw there. Another opens the captain’s log that was recovered from the Demeter. Its ink runs like blood down its pages as the constable reads its chilling entries about crew members being killed.
We then go back several weeks to Bulgaria as the Demeter is taking on cargo and Captain Elliot is seeking crew members. A doctor named Clemens throws his name in the hat but he is rejected in favor of an old, grizzled salty dog. I don’t recall if anything is implied that he was rejected on account of his skin color – he’s black – or not. I think it was more the case that the hiring committee thought he was a landlubber.
Shortly after this, Clemens saves the life of Toby, the captain’s grandson who was standing underneath a crate being loaded onto the Demeter when the ropes gave way and it fell to the dock. The crate has a dragon emblem affixed to it which one of the new recruits, who seems to be a local Balkan fellow, knows to be an evil symbol. He promptly bails at the sight of it and Clemens is made a crew member by the grateful captain.
Our newly-minted naval surgeon befriends Toby who introduces him to his faithful hound, Huckleberry. “Surely they won’t kill the dog,” I thought to myself. Soon strange things start happening as the ship sails the Aegean. For instance, a shadowy figure is seen on deck at night. One night a noise is heard in the hold and a crate is found to have fallen and busted open. All that seems to have spilled out from it is a lot of dirt until a young woman bursts from the mound gasping for breath.
Clemens begins to give her regular blood transfusions to fight off what he has diagnosed as an unknown infection. But we discover that the woman, Anna, is a quick snack for Dracula as she shows Clemens a body laced with scars. She ominously warns him of the daemonic passenger that is now aboard the Demeter.
Then one night all of the ship’s animals are found to have been killed with bite marks on their necks. This includes not only the chickens and goats and whatnot that were to have been food for the crew but also Huckleberry the hound. I was so saddened to see him meet his demise. If the dog got it, then I figured Toby was fair game too.
Each night one of the crew is taken by Dracula. He goes after Toby who locks himself inside the Captain’s quarters in a rather harrowing scene. The boy hides underneath a table and looks to the side only to see Dracula crouched in the corner, slowly rising to meet his prey.
Yeah, Toby got it. Øvredal pulled no punches here.
While there were a few jump scares, the movie is mostly about the growing menace aboard the ship and the crew becoming ever more desperate and paranoid. Heightening the creepiness factor was the order of the day and Øvredal gives us only brief glimpses of Dracula, for the most part.
Clemens and Anna are the last 2 survivors of the wreck of the Demeter. We see Dracula pinned against a mast by a boom but he manages to free himself. Our heroes are adrift and Anna reveals that she will soon be a vampire. It was only the surgeon’s blood transfusions that delayed the transformation. She parts with Clemens and floats on a bit of wreckage into the light of the new dawn where she is engulfed by the purifying flames.
Later in London, Clemens is at a pub where Dracula reveals his presence to him. The good doctor vows that Dracula shall meet his end at his hands, Hippocratic Oath be damned.
I enjoyed The Last Voyage of the Demeter quite a bit. It was chilling and scary but it didn’t go overboard with jump scares. At certain points I knew they were coming but I jumped regardless. The sets were great, bursting with Gothic goodness. The deck of the Demeter at night was wonderfully spooky and the movie wasn’t afraid to end the lives of its most sympathetic characters, a boy and his dog.
Not having read the book, I don’t know if Clemens is a character and, if he is, if he’s black. At first I was on the lookout for nods to contemporary racial commentary but I didn’t notice any. At some point in the second half of the movie Clemens reveals how some people’s reactions to his skin color have motivated him in life but really, he’s just another crew member of the Demeter.
Joseph, the cook, is a devout Christian and, after some sanctimonious dialogue, it was quite satisfying to see him forcibly donate his blood to the cause.
While The Last Voyage of the Demeter doesn’t break new ground or any such thing, it was a very fun horror flick. Will we get a Clemens the Vampire Hunter sequel?
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