Director: Andre Ovredal | Writer: Bragi F. Schut
Starring: Corey Hawkins, Woody Norman, Liam Cunningham, Aisling Franciosi
When Stephen King sees something early and tells you that it’s good, you listen. He was right about the first season of Stranger Things, and he was right about The Last Voyage of the Demeter. This horror-on-water film is about as classic as they come, with little to surprise but just as little to disappoint. Dracula on a boat? Why the hell not. And while it isn’t shaking up the genre exactly, it is playing up the very best parts, and leaving audiences quite happy.
Setting sail from Bulgaria on a course for England, the ship Demeter carries a strange cargo; personal shipping crates, some holding nothing but dirt. But on board is something much more sinister; a legend, a myth, a monster. As the ship’s animals are killed, as the ship’s crew disappear one by one, new crewman Clemens begins to piece together the puzzle. But he may be too late to do anything about the evil that is on board, making its way to the city of London where the bodies are numerous and the alleyways dark.
Always leave them wanting more; that’s the first rule of show business. And that’s exactly what The Last Voyage of the Demeter does, it leaves audiences entertained but wanted to know more of what happened and what will happen in the future. That the book is the original source for that pull shouldn’t count against the movie; this is a clever way to tell us a small part of the tale, and leave us begging to stay up, to keep reading, to not go to bed quite yet. Hawkins was smooth, Cunningham was classic, I recognized Woody from C’mon C’mon and Aisling from Nightingale; it was a great cast, for sure. With terror, horror, blood, fear, and vengeance, this film delivered on all the exciting, key elements that we wanted, staying one step ahead of its predictability.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆