phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2023

The Last Voyage of the Demeter



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 58m
Country: USA, UK, Malta, Italy, Germany
Language: English
Genre Tags: Fantasy, Horror
Plot Summary: A crew sailing from Carpathia to England find that they are carrying very dangerous cargo.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: For a movie featuring Dracula, this is not a Dracula movie. This is an Alien movie. A vicious monster is working its way through a crew trapped on their ship. The movie never quite brings its A-game, but is solidly enjoyable with some fun camera angles and sound design. The ending, however... Oof. Just stop like 5 minutes early.


Outside Reviews:

Peter Sobczynski
3.5 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

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.


Matthew Jackson
Grade: B - New spin on Dracula has some bite

Despite this unevenness, there's a lot to love in The Last Voyage Of The Demeter for horror fans and casual moviegoers alike. Even when it's listing back and forth like a ship adrift, there's always something to grab onto and steady the vessel, whether it's the creature effects or the production design or the wonderful soundscape that blends the creaking and groaning of the ship with Bear McCreary's atmospheric score. The whole thing plays, predictably, like Alien on a boat with Dracula as the alien, and while it's not quite as satisfying as that masterpiece, The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is still worth the trip.