Hey horror fans, Slick Dungeon here! I made my way out to the movie theater the other day and watched the latest creepy horror vampire flick, The Last Voyage of the Demeter. If you’re into bloodsuckers and are wondering if this movie is worth watching, you’re in the right place. Do be warned there will be spoilers below for both the movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter and the book Dracula by Bram Stoker. I’ll try to keep the spoilers light but they will be there. If you can feel your blood drain out of you when you have a film spoiled, go watch the movie and come on back here to read the review after.

In the novel Dracula there is a section where a derelict ship crashes off some rocks near a London port. Once the ship arrives, it’s immediately clear the whole crew was killed and disappeared but there is no real evidence of what happened. We, as the audience, know this ship had none other than Dracula himself on it. It’s one of the moodiest and creepiest sections of the book and all we really get is a newspaper clipping and a portion of a captain’s log. To me it was one of the most memorable parts of the book and an area I thought had been overlooked in most adaptations of the novel. Usually, film adaptations just show a short clip of a boat and have it crash, if they even do that much. But I was pleasantly surprised to see a film which fills in some of these gaps.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is the story of the crew who shuttle Dracula from Romania to London. It stars Liam Cunningham as Captain Eliot, Corey Hawkins as Clemens the ship doctor, Aisling Franciosi as Anna, a stowaway and victim of Dracula, and Javier Botet as Dracula.

Clemens who is looking for a way to London is able to earn his way onto the crew of the Demeter when he rescues Captain Eliot’s young nephew from certain death. Upon leaving port, the locals seem to think the trip is cursed and there are several people who refuse to board the ship, even for an inflated wage.

The film plays out in a lot of ways you would expect. As the voyage goes on, strange things happen. Men get injured or go missing. People see things in the night that seem unexplainable. The threats grow once a young woman is discovered in the cargo hold. She needs medical intervention from Clemens just to survive and seems to know something about the events surrounding injuries and disappearances.

Eventually, the crew realizes how doomed they are and that they are fighting for their lives here. If you have read Dracula, you know they’re doomed but, of course, the characters think they have a fighting chance. We see the crew try to understand what it is they are fighting and how to stop it, as they get picked off one by one.

There are a few good jump scares and a bit of gore but this is far from the scariest film you’ll ever see. The creature design of Dracula is more feral and beast-like than most which gives it a bit of a twist. I’m not sure that was the best choice though as at times the creature design was a bit distracting.

The film is left open ended enough for there to be a sequel, which I assume would continue along the lines of the story of Dracula with some new information added or adapted. I would be willing to watch a sequel if they made one because I feel like this has potential to go somewhere interesting.

If this had been the first film in the reboot of the Universal Monster movies rather than the bloated Tom Cruise feature The Mummy, I think the whole thing could have worked. While this isn’t the most inspired vampire film, it’s a good creature feature worth watching which takes a solid look at an underdeveloped area of Dracula lore.

If you like vampire films, this is definitely worth watching. If you’re only so so on them, this one is skippable but probably worth a watch when you need a spooky film on a rainy night.

Did you see the movie? If so, let me know what you thought of it in the comments below!

Vampiricaly yours,

Slick Dungeon