The Last Voyage of the Demeter 4K 2023 2160p WEB-DL

Horror movie based on a story by Bram Stoker. Count Dracula sails on the ship "Demeter" from Transylvania to London and devours the crew members who begin to guess his existence.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter 4K Review
The grim story of the Russian schooner "Demeter", on its own misfortune entered the port of Transylvanian Varna, - an unimportant and, hand on heart, not the most necessary chapter of Bram Stoker's epistolary novel. Most filmmakers - be it Friedrich Murnau ("Nosferatu, Symphony of Horror"), Tod Browning ("Dracula") or, for example, Patrick Lussier ("Dracula 2000") - in their screen adaptations of this chapter and omitted at all, for the main plot it is insignificant, and the director's thought to unfold nowhere. The Count's journey on "Demeter" is glimpsed in Francis Ford Coppola's "Dracula" and in enough detail - in the British mini-series of the same name from screenwriter Steven Moffat ("Sherlock", "Doctor Who"). The latter, by the way, made a very bold attempt to reinterpret Stoker's work through the prism of fem-optics: added new characters, and in the center of the plot and put a woman - for which he was mercilessly criticized by the audience for disrespect for the source material.

In his new film, Norwegian Andre Øvredal, director of "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" and Stephen King's favorite horror "The Demon Inside", tries to repeat the path of Moffat, focusing on the problems of racial segregation, putting the dark-skinned character at the center and even in a sense criticizing the social mores of the XIX century.

Cambridge graduate Clemens (Corey Hawkins) literally by a miracle gets into the crew of the ship "Demeter", which is traveling from Transylvania to London. The task of the sailors is to bring several heavy cargoes to the English port safely. The beginning of the voyage is marred by the sudden death of the cattle, which, according to the heroes' belief, was infected with rabies by a dog, also killed under strange circumstances. However, when the crew members one by one find themselves victims of a bloodsucking killer, it becomes clear that they are dealing with the most real unclean force. Discovered by Clemens in the ship's underground, a stranger, Anna (Aisling Franchosi), tells of a certain Count Dracula (Javier Botet), who, as it turns out, has been hiding in the dark bowels of the Demeter for several days now.

The most obvious and painful point of "The Last Voyage of the "Demeter"" can be called its frankly raw and idle script: the chapter about the doomed schooner barely stretches for two hours of time, the noble attempts of the director to fill the plot gaps by talking about the problems of racial discrimination in this case does not really save the matter. In a vain attempt to "revitalize" Stoker's textbook story, Overdahl sends Dracula to the background and focuses on portraying the characters of the sailors, among whom, by the way, there is one very colorful Slav Petrovich (Nikolai Nikolayeff), who swears every now and then in coarse, but so familiar Russian mat. The mustachioed Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham), his right-hand man Volchek (David Dastmalchyan), the God-fearing navigator Joseph (John John Briones) - each of them undergoes his own personal struggle with the all-consuming darkness of fear, which is carried by the sullen figure of the Transylvanian Count. One closes his eyes to it out of habit, another throws himself into the maelstrom at the risk of losing what is most important, the third gives up and is defeated. Clemens, as the most intellectual member of the team, tries to know fear rationally, and then fights it, but, it seems, until the very finale remains involuntarily captured by its creepy charm.

Watching the ingenuous murders of the infamous Count nevertheless tires rather quickly - Ovredal returns to the traditional image of the bald, clawed monster from "Nosferatu," aiming to add to the story's creepiness by dehumanizing Dracula to the point of being an entity. But dates with the monster are rare, and Demeter's quarters are too dark to discern something truly scary and exciting in the frame. By relying on the viewer's imagination, Ovredal strangely deprives the viewer of a spectacle that his movie already has little to boast of. Compared to the same "The Demon Within," whose action was also confined in a tiny location, "Demeter's Last Journey" loses noticeably. Primarily because of the deliberate omission of the role of the main villain, albeit in a significantly degraded form. After all, the events described above originate precisely from Dracula's inflamed mind; Ovredal, one could say, steals the idea from its creator, attributes new irrelevant details to it and tries to pass it off as something new, clearly not realizing that by doing so he deprives the story of meaning.