Last Voyage of the Demeter 2023 Movie

The idea of turning the Demeter chapter into a horror movie sounded brilliant: a ship voyage turned into a floating trap, with the shadow of Dracula lurking in every corner. Yet what seemed on paper like a suffocating, anxiety-filled experience ends up being a rather flat exercise. The atmosphere works at times, with a detailed recreation of the ship and that nineteenth-century feel that adds some charm, but the script never fully exploits the potential of its premise. The biggest issue is that the fear fades away too soon. The monster is revealed without much mystery, which drains tension and leaves scenes that, while bloody, rarely become truly unsettling. A greater sense of subtlety and a steady build of suspense could have trapped the viewer in the ship’s darkness alongside the crew. On the plus side, the cast does what it can, and André Øvredal’s direction delivers some striking images, especially when focusing on the oppressive atmosphere of the sea and the claustrophobia of confined spaces. Still, the characters are so thinly developed that it’s hard to care about their fate, which lessens the impact of the finale. The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a decent film—occasionally entertaining, with flashes of good old-fashioned horror. But it leaves the feeling that, with more ambition in its storytelling and better use of tension, it could have been something far more memorable within the genre.