The Last Voyage of the Demeter

The idea of turning this small portion of Dracula — the count’s voyage by sea from Bulgaria to England — into its own story is rather cool. It has a lot of promise, putting almost the entire movie and its cast out at sea. Isolation works well for a horror movie. That also turns the movie into something of a slasher, which the movie handles with lots of shadow and atmosphere, giving a nice sense of gothic doom to the whole thing. There’s something here in the concept, and things to enjoy in the execution. The problem is, the movie is hampered by its name and its prologue. Openly admitting, both in the title, and in the movie’s prologue that forces an in media res telling of the story, drains this movie of life as if it were one of Dracula’s victims. There is no suspense to be had here. None. We know the crew will die. We know even the kid will die. We know all the night watches and fortifications and defensive efforts are doomed. The movie has told us so up front. “But what about slasher movies? We know everyone’s gonna die there!” I hear you saying. But you forget that even the worst slashers like The Mutilator or Final Exam still has survivors who fended off the killer. In the better horror movies — think Alien or Nightmare On Elm Street — the survivor isn’t even obvious until much of the movie has passed. There’s reason to get through the slow whittling down of the designated victims — the anticipated showdown and stopping of the monster. Demeter, by its very design and its own admission, doesn’t have that. This movie is hopeless. We know the ship arrives empty of life in England, its crew lost, because the movie says so twice in the first five minutes. So how can it do that one thing that all horror movies rely on — build suspense? The answer is, it can’t. So all the atmosphere and good acting and claustrophobia is wasted on watching someone play target practice. Had they changed the name and cut off the first five minutes, this could’ve been better; not an all-timer, but a good mid-level horror movie. Instead, it’s an only-just passable movie, as doomed as the crew of the titular ship.