The Last Voyage of the Demeter: A Review

 All right, so here’s my long take on The Last Voyage of the Demeter. The tl;dr is: there were definitely some good elements indicating this could have actually been a good movie, but as it is, overall it is a poorly constructed mess and rather boring.


To start, I wish to list the things that worked really well and deserve praise.


The production design and especially the practical effects were very well done. This movie had the best-looking dead animal props (that weren’t just real dead animals) that I’ve seen in a film. The burns on [spoiler: Liam Cunningham] later in the movie were also incredible. Even though I’m going to rag on it later, technically the creature design for Nosferatu (Dracula is credited as Dracula/Nosferatu, and I refuse to call the creature Dracula for reasons I’ll explain later) is pretty good. Some of the closeups of its face here and there showed some real talent in the design. Some of the locations were very pretty (perhaps TOO pretty, as there is a scene at the end set in a remarkably attractive and clean late 1890s London street). In addition, this soundtrack was pretty good as far as modern movie soundtracks go. It had a flavor, I could actually hear it, and it wasn’t background noise. Some themes were decadent and over the top, but this IS a Dracula story (supposedly) so a certain amount of on-the-nose excess works, in my opinion. You can listen here, but the main theme (the first track) gives you an idea where the soundtrack is at its strongest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8kTVlrXRkU&list=PLRW80bBvVD3XMKPl2NHG0EmzUF4ENQ_4m&index=1. I think having an over the top soundtrack works in a gothic horror. Certainly better than the garbage Dracula musical that Broadway produced way back. The Last Voyage of the Demeter’s soundtrack feels like it is deliberately meant to sound very “Hans Zimmer” a la the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Bear McCreary produced it, and given the man seems to have a career of “writing music to sound like other composers” I can’t help but wonder if that was the idea. Regardless, the soundtrack is a standout in this modern wasteland of air conditioner noise. The first twenty minutes or so of the film are actually pretty good, and I recognized a sort of homage to “Alien” in its structure (on looking up more about the film, this seems to be intentional).


On that note, the film is actually at its strongest in the beginning when it first sets everything up. We get a chance to meet the characters, though Clemens’s (Corey Hawkins) introduction is actually not great. One of the things I liked the best about the beginning (though more on this later in the review) was the main character, Clemens, and Captain Elliot engaging in the beginning of a thematic argument. I have not seen a movie try to do a thematic argument (that wasn’t woke) in so long it actually stood out to me. Clemens claims he is looking for a way to make sense of the world, and is presented as an aggressive materialist doctor who thinks that everything CAN be understood. Captain Elliot, the old sea captain, tells him that “not everything can be” which is a GREAT thematic argument for a DRACULA work. An additional set up for a sub theme is the friction of aggressive modernization/indulstralization vs appreciation of the old ways and sadness of their passing by being steamrollered by rampant “progress.” The characters wax poetic about the old sailing ship, Demeter, and how out of fashion she is in the wake of modern ships, and that she will likely have no place in just a short while. Clemens also tells Captain Elliot’s grandson that “progress cares not for joy,” as a beautiful little nod to this set up. For those who haven’t read Bram Stoker’s Dracula and so are not aware, there is also a theme of the modern crashing into the ancient and mysterious, the rational age of science being confronted by the supernatural and unexplainable, etc. It’s largely where its horror derives. So when I heard all this happening in the beginning of the film, I was tentatively excited, and pleasantly surprised to have my basement-level expectations shattered. In those first twenty minutes or so, my hopes raised to incredible heights; hoping against hope that perhaps the film wasn’t doing well because modern audiences aren’t used to this sort of storytelling anymore, and that there was a secret gem here. This hope was to be crushed utterly after Act Two began.


As an aside about “Alien,” that film has been described as a “haunted house in space” and is an excellent example of how to do a haunted house, since the question is always “why don’t the characters just leave the house?” When I first heard about this movie, I thought that being on a sailing ship out at sea would be a good way to explain that as well, but we will address why this DOESN’T actually work in the case of this film and its construction.


As far as performances, they were largely serviceable, and no one was “bad” per se (more on this later). The standouts were of course Liam Cunningham (Captain Elliot), who the film aggressively refused to make use of, and David Dastmalchian (Wojchek) who I first noticed in the Dark Knight and have been pulling for him ever since. Dastmalchian gets a lot to do, which was nice.


As another faint praise, this film, like Renfield (my review here: https://www.minds.com/usagitenshi/blog/renfield-what-a-waste-1495535641776099337) is minimally woke, though I will get more into that later in this review.


Ok, on to what didn’t work.




Let me begin by saying that right off the bat (ha), I suspected this film would have serious directorial issues. For those who hadn’t seen my concerns about the trailer when it first dropped, here you go: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1495514617340760081?referrer=usagitenshi). This film was directed by André Øvredal, whose most notable work that I can think of is: “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” released in 2019. He also directed Troll Hunter, which I have not seen, but it likely his second most well known work. Having only seen “Scary Stories” I am going to make comparisons between the two. At the time of release, I recall “Scary Stories” being described as “horror training wheels for kids” by Christ Stuckman or one of those other wellknown YouTube reviewers. I feel that is a fair assessment. I was not frightened for the entirety of the run time except for one scene at the hospital where the survivor girl and her love interest are listening to a recording of the main antagonist being tortured by electric shock therapy while her friend is off trying not to (not) die (this is a film for kids, no one dies). In the middle of the recording, the voice of the antagonist suddenly addresses the main character and her love interest in real time. That was the only legitimately creepy scene that I can recall. Now, since this was horror for kids, I wasn’t going to be too hard on it. However, when I saw the trailer to Demeter, I had a certain feeling that this director had learned the wrong lessons from Scary Stories. The trailer fully revealed the man-bat creature, and the indication to me was this film would try to work based on “spectacle.” Scary Stories tried working in that way, though it was more forgivable because even though the various monsters were on screen for extended periods, there were numerous different ones, and so in total none was on screen for more than perhaps a minute or two except the Jangly Man. “Familiarity breeds contempt” as the saying goes, or else “the Law of Diminishing Returns” must always be kept in mind if a specific emotion is desired. Showing the audience the creature is almost always a bad idea, for reasons I have already expanded on in my past criticisms. Getting back to this director, I feared from watching the trailer that he thought one could legitimately milk terror out of a movie monster by heaving it on screen constantly, and knew this would never work.


As it turns out, I was totally right. The man bat is on screen quite a lot. To make things even MORE egregious, the man bat/Nosferatu begins the film as the unimaginably pathetic love-child of Gollum and an old man with Parkinson’s, complete with wheezy, gaspy old man voice. Our first view of this pathetic creature is it barely being able to crawl out of its coffin-crate and shuddering in a fetal position under a bulkhead somewhere.


Remember how I mentioned Clemens had a “meh” character introduction? Well, so-called Dracula looks like a shaved crypt keeper with uncontrollable tremors who can’t even stand up under his own power.


I want you, dear reader, to really wrap your head around the decision to make a Dracula movie where your first sight of Dracula is of a naked, withered Count Orlock rat-man shivering in a corner while practically hugging himself and gasping. That is your visual.


You might be thinking, as I did, that MAYBE the film would do a good job of establishing “well, this is Dracula at his WEAKEST, he’s going to get so gnarly and cool and scary as the movie continues.”




…..my sweet summer child.


He just turns into the man bat. Even at the end of the film [spoilers ahead] where he is in London, he is STILL a CGI monstrosity Orlock-rat-man, but in a top hat and with a cane. I almost laughed out loud. That is an incredibly baffling decision I will have to break down.

The man bat’s design is also very reminiscent of the Jangly Man from Scary Stories. Different directors have different looks the like for monsters. My boy Del Toro likes a certain aesthetic:






Luc Besson likes his droopy-eared monsters:






And it appears that Øvredal likes his old man-esque monsters and asymmetrical faces:

I can’t show you the image, but in the Last Voyage, Olgaren (Stefan Kapicic) smashes his head through a door, and the reveal of the damage to his face is very similar to the asymmetry of the jangly man in the above image. One eye is white, and swollen so large it almost droops from that side of his face, for example.


This is not a criticism per se. A director having an aesthetic or even a stable of actors (he worked with both Dastmalchian and Javiar Botet (Nosferatu) before on Scary Stories. It is only a problem if or when that aesthetic doesn’t jive with the current project. It’s why the Spielberg-looking aliens in Indiana Jones 4 were so awful. So while it works to have Dracula be a tall man, and even a tall OLD man, it does NOT work to have Dracula be a withered husk of a rat-man shivering like a frightened chihuahua, ESPECIALLY if all you’re going to do to make him scarier later is give him wings and more teeth. And especially not if you’re going to have the audience spend quite a bit of time staring directly at him.


Character introductions in movies are CRITICAL. Here is a good video on one way to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldizPDmm9eI and another which shows wonderful examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5psXjzWUve8. This film fails to introduce its main character, Clemens, in a way that tells us much about him, and certainly fails at introducing Dracula for reasons already stated. He is shot from behind in an attempt to create an air of mystery, which is…fine. However, it is soon revealed that he’s staring out at a street and ignoring the card game he was currently engaged with. One might take away from this that he’s a man who isn’t invested in money, and is just wasting time, or else that he’s a naive philosopher and globe trotter out for adventure with a head in the clouds. This second take is closer to what the film presents, but as with the thematic argument introduced, this character is not very well-developed. Clemens is presented as an educated man adrift in a foreign country (in this case Bulgaria, and I’ll nitpick that later), with no prospects, but who does—for reasons that are LUDICROUSLY unclear once he explains his backstory further—desperately want to return to England. He somehow manages to overhear a man whispering into the ear of one of the players at the table something like nine feet behind him in a bar that the Demeter is hiring crew, at which point he grabs his few bags and folds, then runs off to get the job. If he was looking for money for passage, his disinterest in the card game does not support that. If he was simply looking to get hired for a boat, why was he risking throwing away all his money on a card game he clearly has no interest in? What sort of person TURNS THEIR BACK on an active game, especially when, as revealed later in the movie, he is confused and hurt about his experiences with racism? One might think he’d be concerned that he’d be cheated, since he’s not only not facing the game; he’s not even holding his cards. They’re lying face down on the table some five feet behind him. Given that the film later reveals that his quest for “answers to the world” is NOT philosophical in nature, but wholly and completely material, then this man is not a whimsical dreamer lost in some imaginings, either. The final part of the thematic argument for Clemens is at the end when he reduces Nosferatu rat-bat to an “animal” because he sleeps and eats, just like all other creatures (also film, what a way to describe Dracula. Just. WOW). Clemens is also underdeveloped, as he has no clear character flaws, and a very ill-defined motivation. Agency is something I’m going to talk about later, but Clemens only has a half-way agency in the film. He is rejected for the job on the Demeter, and though he earns it position by rescuing Captain Elliot’s grandson from an accident, the fact is he was doing nothing more to earn the position but sitting and waiting for an opportunity to present itself. By happy coincidence, the Captain’s grandson decided to run directly under a three ton box and just squat down to play in the dirt and shadow of this thing, and by unhappy coincidence, this is the exact box that was doomed to fall from the rigging and crush anyone or anything underneath. So, on the one hand, good job Clemens for “petting the dog” but on the other hand, the situation is contrived simply as an excuse to let Clemens on board after being rejected (I will have more to say about Toby, the Captain’s grandson, later). To return to flaws, Clemens has no real character flaws to speak of, as opposed to the far more well-defined Wojchek, who is loyal, stubborn, suspicious, brash, and honest. Clemens is certainly a serviceable character, but a very flat one, who has no arc at all. The changes that happen to him over the course of the film: going from wanting concrete, worldly answers to injustice in the world (also: WHAT?), to single-mindedly wanting to hunt down Dracula is not an arc that follows organically. What does wanting to kill Dracula have to do with his initial ponderings? It appears to be partly a revenge motive, but….so what? Clemens never sought revenge for the injustice he has suffered so far, so this is an orthogonal motivation, if indeed it’s even revenge. It feels rather more like “well, he’s a hero, so he’s going to hunt Dracula now.” It is a similar sort of ill-defined character as Rey from the Disney Star Wars franchise, though he is not over-powered in the way she is, and not instantly liked (or even hated) by everyone in the way that a Mary Sue would be, either. There isn’t much to praise, but there also isn’t much to criticize. He’s rather a milk-toast, undercooked “meh” of a character that isn’t a BAD character per se, just not a very interesting one. All the interesting things about him are external, rather than internal.


The worst character, however, is actually NOT Nosferatu man bat, believe it or not, though I’m getting to him. No, the absolute WORST character in the entire film par excellence is the gypsy woman, Anna (Aisling Franciosi). I say gypsy even though the film uses the word “romani” for two reasons: the first, that was not a term used in the 1890s to my knowledge, and secondly, because ask a Romanian how they feel about calling gypsies a word that sounds like they’re inherently Romanian or from Romania and see what sort of reaction you get.

Ok, Anna…...Anna, Anna, Anna….




As a nitpick, I will say that I have never seen a love interest/leading lady shot so poorly in my entire life. She’s lit worse than Halle Bailey in the Little Mermaid flop. Holy cow.




There is not a single shot of her that looks good. This is the most common angle Øvredal uses:

I s that a nit pick? Kind of, but it was so egregious it called attention to itself. In any case, the “character,” so-called. We all knew that in 2023, only Christopher Nolan can get away with making a film with only white men in it, and that the script would have to find a way to get a woman on board. I don’t actually mind that in principle, so long as the female character is well-developed and, you know, services the script in some way.


There is no polite way to put this: Anna is not a character. She is almost literally an exposition-fairy-deus-ex-machina. Everything about her is contrived. The crew discover her, because as it happens, Parkinsons-Skeletor-Dracula demanded sacrifices before they loaded him up onto the Demeter, and they gave her over to him. He had her buried in a crate full of dirt for potentially days and was feeding off her the entire time. Happily, she was not only in a crate that WASN’T under the 24-50 other three-ton crates, but was ALSO in a crate that was poorly stowed and fell and popped open on day two or three of the voyage, while she was still alive, and hadn’t turned into a vampire minion yet. WHAT A SERENDIPITOUS EVENT. Because throughout the movie it is revealed that Dracula can mess with people’s minds (more on that in the Dracula section), I had thought that this might be an intentional part of Dracula’s plan for the ship, and that she was actually being controlled and so would be able to run interference for Dracula if the crew got too close. Considering how Anna doles out information to the crew, this theory would have fit. Alas, this was not the case. Anna is discovered unconscious and dying and provides Clemens another “pet the dog” moment, while providing the first human victim of Dracula a chance to “kick the dog” (he wants her chucked overboard, despite the fact that she’s clearly ill and probably dying). While she is feverish and unconscious and receiving daily(?) blood transfusions from Clemens (more on that in nitpicks), Toby reveals that she “doesn’t speak much English.” I knew from the trailers that Anna knew about Dracula, and was wondering how the film was going to prevent her from just spilling all the beans the moment she was awake. As it turns out, like any good exposition fairy, she speaks perfect English, but only gives out information as the plot demands. Her first lines of dialogue is a minutes-long story about her village and Dracula and how she was given to him (though not how she ended up in the crate or anything else) which is delivered in perfect English to Clemens. At no point does Anna wonder where she is, or even SUGGEST that the crew go looking for Dracula, whom she confirms is ABSOLUTELY ON THE SHIP THIS VERY MOMENT. She mopes around and says “there’s evil on board” but the moment the camera is not on her, she goes into stasis only to pop out again ready to reveal more exposition if the scene requires it. And her exposition is WORTHLESS. In the entire minutes-long story about her village and Dracula, she actually reveals NO useful information, has no questions, doesn’t have any explanation for why an ignorant, peasant-gypsy from Romania (NITPICK ON THAT LATER) knows PERFECT ENGLISH, nor asks why she’s on a boat, neither speculates about what to do, neither suggests ANY ACTION AT ALL. We then don’t see her for at least a day or two of movie time, and she’s just…ready to do some action. There is a painfully hilarious scene where Toby is locked in the cabin’s quarters and the nearest upper quadrant of the door is busted open. Clemens attempts to reach in with his left arm twisting backwards to unlock the latch, and to his credit, Corey Hawkins does his absolute best selling the audience on the fact that he “totally can’t reach the lock” when it is painfully obvious that he can. While he and the other men struggle to get the door open, Anna just warps into the scene with a gun and shoots the lock off. This is the first instance of her stealing agency from other characters, but it is not the ONLY one. Later, [mega spoilers] when the few remaining crew are trying to conduct a funeral for Toby, his grandfather, the captain, is unable to find the strength to say anything, so Anna steps forward and gives the most blah sermon imaginable FOR THE GRANDFATHER. Later, in the final confrontation with man-bat, [spoilers] it is ANNA who manages to pin man-bat and save Celemens from being killed by the man bat, allowing them both to jump overboard. Just…wow. At the end, Anna reveals that [spoiler] she has been infected by Dracula all along, and everyone who is burns to death in sunlight, and she says that her village “chose for her to be food for [Dracula], but [she] chooses this [to burn to death on her own terms].” If she was the sort of person who was willing to “go out on her own terms,” why didn’t she try to kill Dracula on her own over the course of the many days/weeks over which the story goes? Why didn’t she hop overboard the moment she realized she was on a ship with Dracula and a crew that wasn’t going to bother trying to fight or even LOCATE the monster? Because the plot didn’t need her to. At the end, when there are LITERALLY only three crew members left alive, it finally occurs to Clemens to ask her how to kill Dracula. She reveals she has no idea.


….Just….MARVELOUS script writing there.


I could go on. I don’t want to bother. There’s not enough of a character there to even get annoyed at. She is literally a plot device.


Ok, now onto the Dracula section. I will try to be brief. Everyone is at least familiar in PASSING with Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. All anyone needs is a photo and they ought to know more or less what I’m talking about.


Observe:




















Cinema buffs may be aware that there were two Dracula movies made at this time. The other one was a Spanish production, which is largely praised for having better production value and/or direction. Here is a brief video on the other film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Ac6sNrD94. Despite everything else about the film, I contend the real reason it was not as popular as the English one was this: its Dracula was lamer. If you’re making a Dracula film, you had BETTER GET DRACULA RIGHT. I am not exaggerating when I say (a little resignedly) that Count Dracula is, for better or for worse, THE pop cultural icon of the last two centuries. (https://universalmonsters.fandom.com/wiki/Dracula_in_popular_culture) No other fictional character comes close. I don’t want to get into a whole lecture about Count Dracula here, but I think it goes without saying that if you don’t have a good Dracula in your vampire work, and ESPECIALLY in your Dracula work, then nothing else about your work will be of value. He is the villain to top all villains: the dark lord, the sadist, the lawful evil, the maniacal gremlin, the ravenous monster, the corrupter, the seducer, the rapist, the embodiment of all that is evil. You HAVE to get him right. To put it succinctly, this movie fails ABYSMALLY. It fails harder than any other film Dracula that I am aware of, and I include his pathetic cameo in Buffy season 5, and kid-friendly versions like the Hotel Transylvania franchise. The ABSOLUTE. BOTTOM. (I am not speaking as to whether it is good to acclimate children to this embodiment of evil as cute or sympathetic, only speaking as to a version of him as written and presented).


Holy cow. Where to begin?


I’ve talked at length about his appearance, but it is actually SO MUCH WORSE than just how he looks. Anna calls him a “demon in human skin” which is hilarious, since at no time, not even WHILE IN LONDON IN A TOP HAT does he ever look remotely human. I am not exaggerating when I say that Count Orlock, after whom this creature was clearly modeled, is better able to pass as a normal human than Nosferatu is at any point in this entire movie:


Pictured: a totally normal human in comparison to man-bat.




For comparison, here is Janglyman-bat himself in his more Gollum-like appearance:




A lso, enjoy this alternate face:






T his image comes from this hilarious article with a clip that I think you should take a look at if you want to get an idea about the upcoming problem with this “Dracula”

https://www.ign.com/articles/last-voyage-of-the-demeter-horrific-dracula-interview


This version of Dracula LOVES his lame, generic, “bad guy” lines. As you heard there, he croak-whispers “it begins...now” at the third man he is going to hunt. ….Just….what are you talking about, Count Gollum? What begins? This is the third man you’re going to kill? What is this line supposed to mean in the context of anything else? You’ve already been killing, and we haven’t reached the point in the script where you plan to kill indiscriminately and without reserve, that happens many days in the future. Who is this man to you? Why say this??? UUUUUUGHHHHH


In the finale, when Clemens calls Dracula out (please, just...let my torment end) by calling him more or less a base animal, and Nosferatu is about to suck his blood, Clemens spits out “I’m not scare of you” and Nosferatu says--I am not kidding--“You will be.”


As far as characterization goes, this “Dracula” is a total mess. On the one hand, we have to contend with the film’s botched thematic argument about crushing materialism opposed to allowing even the slightest room for the supernatural or supranatural. Anna describes Nosferatu as “evil” with enough emphasis that we are probably meant to take that as “evil” with a capital “E,” which would be fine for Dracula, except that Clemens calling him out as an animal seems to be the correct choice at the end of the film. Moreover, this “Dracula” more or less behaves like an animal. I can’t begin to fathom why the village Anna comes from was frightened of a gasping, parapalegic rat-bat-man who could only kill you if you literally walk right up to him (as seen by the first human kill in the movie, Petrovsky), when they could have presumably just ignored him or even moved, if they really felt it was necessary. But more than that, this “Dracula” seems to get a kick out of making his bloody rampages insanely obvious, and even getting spotted killing people. He makes what might generously be described as “the barest minimum attempt” to hide himself. He leaves evidence of his presence EVERYWHERE and the ONLY reason he doesn’t get found sooner is that the crew makes the baffling decision of simply NOT LOOKING FOR THE THING THAT VIOLENTLY ATE ALL THEIR ANIMALS AFTER OPENING THEIR CAGES AND RIPPING THE SHIP’S DOG IN HALF AND THEN DRAGGING THE BODY TO THE KITCHEN SO THEY COULD STUMBLE ACROSS IT, as well as “hey, did Petrovsky shave himself drunkenly last night, slit his own throat all over the deck, then fall off the side?” If any of the crew had actually really bothered to look for what must be an obvious existential threat on board sooner, they could probably have found ol’ man-bat’s super special locked box-coffin easily. Once Clemens decides to check the boxes….when there are three crew members left (of which he is one), he finds ol’ man-bat’s box (which Anna effortlessly figures out how to unlock on the first try) in what might be under ten minutes in-movie time. This is made all the worse when it becomes clear that Nosferatu here has Count Orlock’s weakness to sunlight (Dracula, remember, does NOT get killed by sunlight), so one would assume if he had two brain cells to rub together, he might want to be careful NOT to advertise his presence left and right on a small boat where there’s really a finite number of places for a seven-foot tall rat-bat-man to be hiding and he seems to be completely insensate during the day. All the crew theoretically has to do is just locate the specific box, then during the day winch it up out of the hold and then nail it shut and whoopsy-daisy it right over the side into the ocean if they’re not sure they can kill him. This monster, bafflingly, is an exhibitionist who likes to make faces at the camera and other characters. He barely speaks, and when he does, he throws out the most cliched one-note villain lines imaginable, and often in a hoarse gollum-old-man voice. It is one of the most pathetic things I have ever witnessed. He is written like a creature monster, not like a ghost, a demon, or highly intelligent monster. He’s like the monster form of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s performances. She’s always performing “for the camera.” So is this weirdo. Honestly, if this monster wasn’t called “Dracula” and was just some...generic, low-level vampire barely capable of sentient thought, he would be fine, though the movie would still be terrible. As-is, we have to put up with a lobotomized Dracula-Orlock transporter accident who acts like a clown the entire film. I might characterize him as a “talking crocodile with a flair for showing off.” What a sad, sad characterization.


There is a sad attempt to say that he can “get into the minds” of other characters, as when he [spoiler] whispers to the Captain that if the Demeter successfully lands at England, then he can bring the captain’s grandson back to life. As it turns out, this is a plot cul-de-sac because all it takes is Anna telling him “the devil talks to me, too, he twists everything you want. That’s what the devil does” before the captain goes “okie-dokie, right you are” and off they all go like nothing happened. If you cut that scene from the film, it would be better, because then I could try to pretend the crew acting like morons makes sense because “Dracula” was messing with their heads. Also, glad to see that Anna can shrug off the great evil that’s been preying on her for days such that she can self-immolate randomly at the end of the film.




Ok, this is getting long. I’ll just list some other plot problems and nit picks before calling this quits. I don’t want to talk about this garbage much more.


The plot can only happen due to rampant and inexplicable stupidity and characters acting against their own best interests and motivations. As stated earlier, about….oh, three or so days into the journey, Orlock carefully unlocks all the animal cages and rips them to pieces, then leaves all their mangled corpses in the hold, then grabs the ship’s dog, rips off its face and tears it in half, then carries the dog over to the kitchen to deposit there to be found. After being confronted with this carnage, the crew more or less agree that “the dog was rabid” and despite bringing up that the dog could not 1) have carefully opened the cage doors, and 2) could not have ripped itself in half and walked its corpse to a new location, they just press on and make no attempt to solve this mystery. Then, when a crewman goes missing overnight but there is a suspicious amount of BLOOD ALL OVER the deck, as well as part of the cargo hold being punched clean up and open, large enough for a large animal or a man of some sort to slip through, they just keep going “well, this sure is a mystery. Odd, odd, odd.” The reason the movie attempts (I think) to give for this disinterest in making port is because they get a bonus if they reach England early. Which is...fine, but it doesn’t explain why the crew doesn’t think to search the ship until they find the BODY of another crew member, as well as another who has been badly mauled. Moreover, let’s take this moment to return to Toby, the captain’s grandson. Like Anna, he is a plot device, meant to serve as a woobie, as well as allowing an excuse for Clemens to come on board. Captain Elliot (in one of the few of Liam Cunningham’s actual scenes) states that this will be “his last voyage. He’s going to retire to the country to take care of his grandson” almost word for word. Go ahead and laugh, I almost did. His grandson is the ONLY living member of his family left. One MIGHT assume that if that was the case, and there was an obviously dangerous...I don’t know, vicious animal? Maniacal stowaway? on board, if you were Captain Elliot, you’d make port immediately because the bonus won’t do you your grandson any good if he gets SLAUGHTERED, no matter WHAT the crew says about it. Because this returns to the “haunted house” question from earlier. No matter what, this ship can’t POSSIBLY be that far from any shore. It is traveling from Bulgaria to England. It will be hugging the coast throughout the Mediterranean, and then Portugal. There might be a brief time after passing Spain when they will be somewhat more distant, but I contend there’s no real reason they CAN’T make port. This isn’t space. The distance is miles, not LIGHT YEARS. Especially when faced with some sort of creature or murderer on board who is literally cutting its way through the living things on board. Considering the boat washes ashore in Whitby, when Dracula wants to be in London, but the crew is still LARGELY STILL ALIVE AND STEERING when they are less than a day away from their destination, that means they passed up numerous opportunities to make port and try to get to the bottom of what was killing them. Here is where Whitby is, for those wondering:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Whitby,+UK/@53.9246125,-1.8290978,6z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x487f1779f21902d7:0xa0fd139f12932a0!8m2!3d54.486335!4d-0.613347!16zL20vMDE2bjd2?entry=ttu


While the ship also washes up in Whitby in the book, it has been unmanned for quite some time, and probably being steered in by Dracula via the weather, so I am willing to accept a certain amount of weirdness with its landing. Also, I believe Stoker was referencing a real shipwreck, but I would need to double-check.


Characters act counter to logic and sense throughout the film. I don’t have the energy to break it all down.


To return a bit to the thematic argument, but also to cover how “Dracula” doesn’t work in this movie, there was another very odd decision in this film. There is precisely one crucifix on board a ship full of people who at least appear to be Christian. Joseph, the Chinese Christian cook, who I assume is meant to be Orthodox (he references St Nicholas, but he could be Catholic as well) does not have a crucifix, he wears a single cross (he was also one of the more interesting characters at the beginning of the film, though he is treated VERY badly later on). There is the thematic argument about total materialism (which also fits with the philosophical mindset of the nineteenth century) opposed to the mysticism or even “superstition” of the previous centuries. As stated before, Stoker’s work directly reflects this conflict. However, any time a character holds this single crucifix in the presence of Orlock-Dracula, he kills them immediately. The film even has lingering shots on the crucifix dangling from fingers going limp as Nosferatu drains his victims. Later, Joseph, the most outwardly vocal Christian, is so frightened of the monster that he rambles incoherently to himself about Jonah, steals a lifeboat and rows out to sea by himself to escape, with his Bible sitting on the seat in front of him. Orlock kills him and sprays his blood across the Bible, then sends the bloodied lifeboat back to the Demeter (I don’t know, this monster makes no sense, and I don’t have the energy to talk about how Dracula ought not to be able to fly out over the sea to get this crew member, and why that breaks the book later, but I just...don’t have the energy. There is so much wrong with this film). So the film makes a very clear and aggressive message that faith, and by extension, God or goodness, do not exist. This certainly fits with the materialist-oriented argument winning. But vampires are NOT frightening monsters in the material world. I cannot remember which fictional work more or less called vampires “4F rejects” because they have so many weaknesses. The fact is, they do, BUT their threat is not material, it is wholly supernatural. They are demonic, uncanny, and embodiments of evil, not just flying bat people who like to suck blood. Once you remove the supernatural element, then you’re just dealing with a particularly vulnerable human-animal with a weird diet. As far as this film, you cannot have Dracula be “the devil” while also refuting the existence of, or the power of, God. I could do a whole podcast about this ridiculous Hollywood trope (which was the cause for my hard eye-rolling when I saw that there was a sequel to “the Nun” in the trailers as well as another Exorcist movie coming out). Good vampire movies treat the vampire LIKE a demon. You could plug a number of the beats for Dracula into the Exorcist, for example. Van Helsing, the expert, is there to exorcise the demon, Dracula, who is slowly corrupting and taking over Mina. The Last Voyage of the Demeter is structured more like Jaws or Alien. It’s a creature feature, but that’s NOT what vampires are. If this Dracula was called a “mutant” or a “demihuman” or something, or literally replaced with an actual animal monster, like a deep-cave, mansized vampire bat, the plot would hardly change at all. I mean, Anna would make no sense, but she already makes no sense and contributes nothing but deus ex machina rescues anyway, so all you’d lose is bad writing. Basically, if this so-called “Dracula” was just a large, particularly smart bat—say, as smart as a velociraptor in the Jurassic Park franchise—the only thing you’d lose would be Anna, and that’s no loss. I could go on, and I might, but not here.


Nitpicks:
Why make a reference to the captain lashing himself to the wheel a la the book, if you’re going to untie him and set him down on the deck after being killed by Nosferatu? It would be like making a King Arthur movie where he draws the sword from the stone, then puts it back, and then forgets about it. Don’t do the reference if you’re going to undo the reference moments later. People who don’t recognize the reference don’t need it, and people who DO recognize it will be confused and annoyed.


Why have Clemens meet the crew in Bulgaria? Especially after he reveals that he went down to the Balkans because KING CAROL I OF ROMANIA TRIED TO HIRE HIM AS A PHYSICIAN. ROMANIA. (ugh, getting to that) Considering that two other characters are from “Romania” (despite the fact that Dracula is supposed to be from Transylvania), we run into Clemens in BULGARIA. Why is he in Bulgaria floating around aimlessly hoping to hire himself onto a boat to get back to England? Why not be in Constanta? Which is in Romania? Why, if TWO OTHER CHARACTERS are going to be from Romania, NOT just have him be in Romania too? I know that the ship departed from Varna in the book, but since this movie doesn’t follow the book anyway, why not make your life easier with regards to characters? I mean, if you follow the captain’s log he makes no mention of a grandson or a female stowaway, so...just do what you want. Only Petrovsky is like the book (the first man to go missing in the novel, and in the movie, though in the movie he is the only Russian).


Why is this Russian vessel manned by only one Russian, and a bunch of people from all over the world? Like the Chinese Christian cook named Joseph?


Why does this movie not understand that Transylvania wasn’t part of Romania until just before the end of the first World War?


The blood transfusions thing is something I’m not quite sure what to make of. Blood transfusions certainly made an appearance in the novel, Dracula, but when Stoker included them, they were a controversial treatment. Clemens is a doctor who studied at Cambridge sometime before 1897, and has been on the road for some time. Nevertheless, he happens to have the tools he needs to perform a transfusion (several for Anna, and at least one for Toby) on hand. There is another possibility that this inclusion is a nod to Charles Drew, the black doctor who invented blood banks, and potentially even a reference to the common myth that he died because he was refused a blood transfusion himself for being black. I can’t say for certain that this was intended, but I thought it a curious possibility. (here is more info if you’re interested: https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/question/2004/june.htm)


Overall, a waste of time.