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.

The voyage of Dracula across the seas to London was a tale that I always wanted to see put to film. Unfortunately, this movie did not put enough of an emphasis on this actually being Dracula. Yes, it was stated in the movie by the characters, and some of the lore was set up at the start, but once they set sail on the Demeter, it turned into another demon-beast just killing victims. Dracula's monstrous form looked great, there just wasn't enough of the "human" part of him portrayed. The movie looked good, and the characters were interesting enough that they were not just monster fodder. Maybe there wasn't enough Dracula-as-a-plague, either. It was constantly stated that he needed to feed, but that's not the same as his bat and rat, disease-carrying, rabid animal characteristics.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter has a huge amount of wasted potential. The setting is atmospheric and the cast is decent. The real downside to it is that it shows way too much way too early. The suspense and mystery is killed by completely unveiling the "bad guy" in the first third of the movie and it unfortunately devolves into a B-movie adjacent creature flick from there on. I'm not one to complain about characters making dumb choices for the sake of the story in a horror movie, but I think this one really turns it up to eleven. I don't recall a single film in recent memory that had the main characters make such consistently wrong decisions throughout and it kinda turned into eye rolling in the last third. Overall I really wanted to like it, because the setting and theme was intriguing. It's not a horrible movie by any means, but it's a shame to see how close it came to being good, just to end up being pulled back into mediocrity.