THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER

CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS, IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK THAT WAS WRITTEN 127 YEARS AGO OR SEEN ANY OF THE HUNDREDS OF MOVIES BASED ON IT

Finally! This was actually supposed to come out in October 2023, but it's taken this long due to the original distributors being bought by another company and it's taken going on a year to sort out the legalese. And it's generally been worth the wait: a welcome return of full-on period Gothic Horror, and a new yet familiar representation of one of the genre's principal towering figures. What a pity it's taken so long.

If you didn't know already, given the vast number of Dracula adaptations there have been over the years, the Demeter was the ship on which Count Dracula travelled from Bulgaria to England, until it broke up on the rocks near Whitby. The disappearances of the Demeter crew are detailed in the Captain's log, presented as half of one chapter from Bram Stoker's original novel; this fills in all the gaps as to what we all know actually happened on board, as the crew are picked off one by one by a terrifying creature that surely doesn't have anything to do with either the fifty large crates of earth in the hold, or the mysterious, barely alive young woman who has apparently either stowed away in the hold or fallen out of one of the boxes.

One of the best things about The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is that it presents Dracula not as a tortured romantic lead or a suave and charismatic aristocrat, but a twisted, repulsive monster of the Nosferatu ilk. Which is absolutely right: the price for immortality should be a miserable existence spent forever in the shadows and darkness. The only real trouble is that by nature of most vampire tales the bulk of the horror takes place at night and sometimes, with events lit only by moonlight and candles, the film is visually too dark - a technique that's becoming increasingly prevalent for no apparent reason. I would recommend that you pick a cinema where they do actually turn all the house lights off, but unfortunately that's not an option as the film will be heading straight to home viewing platforms with no UK theatrical release. What a shame when terrible films like Tarot and Baghead get the wide exposure they frankly don't deserve, and a nicely crafted, serious horror movie like this one is pretty much thrown away. The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is still definitely worth your time, but do turn the lights out.

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