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12 months ago

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

a review by BornKnight

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a movie directed by André Øvredal (Troll Hunters, 2010, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, 2016), that tells basally the prologue of 1897's Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1847-1912) that tells about the Captain's Log of the Bulgarian ship named after the movie tile in 1867, before the events that happens in England.

Bragi Schut Jr. that took almost 20 years to put the idea to a movie adapted the text to a full screenplay (Escape Room, Velvet Road) and there may reside the big flaw of the movie, because the rhythm is inconsistent and the plot even being interesting moves very slowly, with many flaws. It tries to emulate an ancient Alien the 8th passenger movie to this claustrophobic setting.

Maybe the worst mistake was to put a protagonist Corey Hawkins in the role of the afro-english doctor Clemens that survives the trip and will start the hunt for Dracula, this already show in a pre-credits scene where the doctor is on a bar and see's the shadowy figure of Dracula, alrey telling the viewers that will de a sequence, on cinema or streaming.

Nothing to say about the well know story - a massacre of the tripulation of the ship, that consists with the book, and the arrival at the destiny as a wreck with the coffin containing earth of Dracul's "bed" (I wonder if it sunk in the middle of the Atlantic what would happened - no earth, but no no sunlight so...anyway:).

After some gruesome assassinations on the ship, is obvious that somebody would be suspicious of each other, but not in the scale they happen, The mouse and cat cat between Dracula (in his man-bat form) and crew is the main core of the movie.

Göran Lundström made the wonderful prosthetic work that was used almost 100% oon the scenes with dracula only using CG to put the artist that interpreted it on the creature (that is very similar to the one at Midnight Mass at Netflix)

Beside the prosthetics and some scenes, the movie is too slow, and the final is ridiculous. I would give it a score of 6,0 out of 10,0 / B- by the effort.