Film Review : " the Last Voyage of the Demeter"

This movie is better than 'Renfield". It should be as it's helmed by Trollhunter director Andre Ovredal. The Norwegian director understands he has to play Hollywood's game if he wants to play in Hollywood's toybox and move into the mainstream. Not that this film's opening weekend is going to help him with that, and there lingers a suspicion that if he trusted his gut. Instead he agreed to a screen play with weak characters , the main weakness it's protagonist who feels forced into the canvas of this tale. Granted we know the ship is doomed, but they could have made us care about the fate of the crew. Instead no one except the child and his dog are likeable characters. The movie looks good and captures a mood well, but aside from that things are paper thin, which might have still works if it was not for some of the more glaring problems. 

 The plot holes are so large you could sail the Demeter through them. The very premise of the film being called into question by one. This movie should be filling in the blanks of a story already told. One of the largest comes to glaring crack in the fissure of the premise with that fact that if  Dracula was on the ship to begin with it is  because as a vampire he can bodies of moving water. So why is he flying over water in the film's third act. No, you twit there can't be spoilers to the movie as it follows Dracula's arrival in London direct from Bram Stoker's source material.  If he could fly in this manner there would be no need, to take a boat to England rather than fly there , it's only a three hour flight . He has to move all the dirt from his homeland you say? Well if Dracula has the foresight to hire Johnathan Harker to help handle his business affairs then he could have had the dirt shipped ahead of time to Carfax Abbey. 

Dracula might be in a weakened state from travel at the beginning of the movie , but we never see him as the character documented in Stoker's work.  Instead we get a mocking monster who in it's best moments looks a little like a Nosferatu, but never captures the regal nature of the character. I get artistic license and wanting to do something new, but when you are pulling directly from a book, you have chosen your parameters. It's been brought up that this is basically "Aliens" and while that is true in the monster stowaway trope, I think they did the best they could to avoid that. I did not find this movie to be scary, but it was entertaining for what it was. though while "Renfield ' was overall a worse movie, I might at least preferred Cage's take on Dracula which had some Bela Lugosi moments to fall back on. Hollywood needs to learn nobody cares about the story they want to tell and we want the story that should be told, sure try it from different angles, but if you are making movies of icons like Dracula or the Wolf-man then balance your artistic twist in a manner that still honors that legacy.  Hopefully the spanking it took at the box office will drive this point home.