Starring: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Javier Botet, Stefan Kapicic, Nikolai Nikolaeff
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story:
Supernatural horror directed by André Øvredal. Based on the chapter from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) follows the merchant ship Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo, fifty unmarked wooden crates, from Carpathia to London. Strange events befall the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a merciless presence onboard the ship. When the Demeter finally arrives off the shores of England, it is a charred, derelict wreck. There is no trace of the crew.
Where to Watch:
Best Quotes
Captain Eliot: This log is a record and a warning. And if it finds you, God help you, as he has abandoned the Demeter. We tried to stop him. If we didn’t succeed, God have mercy on your souls.
Wojchek: Learning about boats ain’t the same as keeping one afloat. What did the sailor ever learn from a book that did him an ounce of good when he was lost at sea?
Clemens: Astronomy, for one. You can lose a chart. You can lose a compass. But you can’t lose the stars, can you?
Wojchek: [referring to the man that returned his coins] This is more than I paid to bring the damn cargo here. What did he spit at the end? “Good leave” or “good riddance”?
Olgaren: “Good luck”.
One-Eyed Sailor: [after he drops the crate with the dragon symbol on it] You never said nothing about dragons. I know this mark. It is a bad omen.
Wojchek: You could have killed the boy. I don’t give a whore’s a** about dragons!
One-Eyed Sailor: Keep your gold, the devil’s serpent. God save you all. May he save the ship. May he save the crew.
Wojchek: [referring to the ship] She moves like a fat pig with all this weight.
Toby: Have you ever seen a real dead man, Mr. Clemens? I have.
Toby: You knock on wood like this if there’s any trouble. Or to signal a change of watch, or if the sky’s looking fierce. You can hear it all the way from the bunks to the captain’s on a clear night. I swear. I’ve heard it.
Clemens: Yes, I believe you have.
Toby: This used to be a lumber ship, built the old way. But now everyone wants steam ships. Captain says there’s no joy in metal ships.
Clemens: Well, that’s the thing about progress, isn’t it? It cares not for joy, your captain’s or otherwise. The Demeter’s a fine boat. No doubt.
Toby: [referring to the animals] The faster we eat them, the less crap I have to clean up.
Abrams: Going to get myself a proper shave and one of them waistcoats with the tails on. Ooh, the English ladies love them tails. Almost, almost as much as they love me.
Olgaren: If you put them over your face, maybe.
Abrams: [referring to the their bonus payment] What are you lot going to do with yours?
Joseph: “The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself.” Although the Lord might not mind if I just simply watered myself.
Clemens: Well, everything I desire in this life, unfortunately, coin will be of no aid.
Abrams: And what would that be, now?
Clemens: To understand this world. The more of it I see, the less any of it makes sense.
Captain Eliot: The world cares little for sense, Mr. Clemens. Perhaps it is not meant to be understood but rather experienced and accepted.
Clemens: Perhaps. But I need to get to the heart of it. And understand why the world has so much goodness inside it, and yet… Isn’t that what all men desire? Deep down.
Wojchek: [referring to Anna] A stowaway.
Clemens: A stowaway who is going to die if we don’t administer proper medical care.
Wojchek: You want to help her? Who knows what kind of diseased rat infections she has.
Clemens: [to Wojchek] You are of aid to me, or you are in my way and need to leave. In either case, please make yourself apparent and fulfill your purpose.
'That's the thing about progress, isn't it? It cares not for joy.' - Clemens (The Last Voyage of the Demeter) Share on X
Clemens: We’ve done all we can.
Wojchek: Then maybe she’ll wake up in time to see us toss her to the waves. We let Poseidon deal with stowaways, always have.
Clemens: I didn’t save this girl’s life only to watch you end it. At least let us off at the next port.
Wojchek: “Us”, is it? I see where your loyalty lies, Mr. Clemens.
Captain Eliot: I would prefer not to have my final voyage at the helm of the Demeter marred by the death of a young woman. Stowaway or not.
Olgaren: You’re making all sorts of friends, aren’t you, Mr. Clemens? Woman on the ship. Bad omen. Hmm? Bad luck. Men won’t be happy.
Clemens: The men don’t need to be happy, do they, Mr. Olgaren? They just need to get this boat to London, huh?
Olgaren: I’m trying to help you, son. Keep spouting words like that. Maybe she’ll make it to London, but I reckon you’ll be swimming.
Olgaren: There is something out there. Someone.
'This world. The more of it I see, the less any of it makes sense.' - Clemens (The Last Voyage of the Demeter) Share on X
Petrofsky: [after Huckleberry and the livestock are killed] We all know. Bad luck, woman on board. Makes skies turn, animals go mad.
Joseph: I guess we say the Lord’s Prayer over cabbage and potatoes for the rest of our voyage.
Olgaren: No man did this. Evil is on board. Powerful evil.
Olgaren: The skies are angry.
Clemens: The skies feel nothing, my friend. It’s precipitation and air pressure, as knowable as the workings of this ship.
Olgaren: I saw something last night. There is something unnatural on board with us.
Clemens: I’m afraid I don’t believe in superstitions, Mr. Olgaren. I believe in science and in nature. And in Saint Nicholas, since Joseph wouldn’t give me food otherwise.
Olgaren: Keep your science. I saw your face in the dark last night. Your eyes. You saw it, same as I.
'The world cares little for sense. Perhaps it is not meant to be understood but rather experienced and accepted.' - Captain Eliot (The Last Voyage of the Demeter) Share on X
Joseph: You could burn this ship to the keel, Mr. Clemens, and the rats would just nest in the ashes. Something drove them off. A boat without rats, such a thing is against nature.
Wojchek: Petrofsky must have been drunk. Slipped on the deck and fell overboard.
Clemens: Right after he bled all over the deck?
Wojchek: And what were you doing up in the middle of the night? You had his knife in your hand when we found you.
Clemens: Of course. I killed him. And somehow managed to keep myself free of all the blood you see staining the boards, then I rang the signal bell to report myself. It’s quite brilliant, isn’t it, Mr. Wojchek? Open-and-shut case.
Anna: He is here. We have to get off this boat. Now! All of us! We have to get off this boat!
Anna: He will kill us all!
'There are things in this world that we can't control, but we do our best.' - Clemens (The Last Voyage of the Demeter) Share on X
Anna: He is here on the ship. He has been all along.
Clemens: He?
Anna: It is spoken in my village of an evil that lives in the mountain above. A castle older than any of us.
Clemens: Evil?
Anna: An evil that appears as a man when it wants to hide its true nature. And at night he feeds on the blood of the innocent.
Anna: I have lived in the shadow of that castle my whole life. I knew that the elders, they made bargains for the safety of our people.
Clemens: You were given to this man?
Anna: It is not a man.
Clemens: Then an animal?
Anna: No, it is not some mindless animal either. Do not make that mistake.
Anna: We call him Dracula.
Clemens: And you believe that he brought you on board? Why?
Anna: He brought me here to feed.
Clemens: [as he sees the bite marks on her] Dear God.
Anna: He is here, Mr. Clemens. The thing that wears the skin of a man. In the night, it drinks our blood, and he is on this ship. Which means we will never leave it.
Clemens: [referring to Olgaren’s wound] This looks like a bite. It looks like the same bites we saw in the animals, the same bites that ravaged the girl in the carpenter’s shed.
Wojchek: You think some devil did this? Like she says?
Clemens: I do not.
Wojchek: Good.
Clemens: But something did. And that is real, and on board, whether we choose to believe in it or not.
Captain Eliot: Search the ship, Mr. Wojchek. Not just the hold. Everywhere.
Abrams: I don’t like this. Sun’s going down, and he’ll be coming.
Captain Eliot: God seems to have deserted us, and we are drifting to some terrible doom. Lord help us.
Clemens: [referring to Olgaren] He’s mad. As if possessed.
Joseph: Possessed by that beast?
Clemens: Oh, no, no. Not in the way you mean, at least. It’s like a poison, or an infection.
Wojchek: Infection? Not like any I’ve ever seen.
Olgaren: I can hear everything. The sea. The wind. The blood pumping in your veins. It burns.
Joseph: [after Olgaren burns in the sun] I warned you. I warned all you, didn’t I? It is a punishment brought down for our sins. Petrofsky, a criminal. Olgaren, gypsy heathen. A whoremonger. A lecher. And from Gomorrah herself.
Abrams: Oh, will you shut the hell up, you bleeding idiot!
Joseph: [referring to Toby] That child will be the next to rise up from death. Satan’s black blood pumping corruption through his veins. God’s anger has come upon this vessel like Jonah.
Clemens: It has to be hiding here. If we can find it, I think we might be able to figure out a way to save him.
Wojchek: Are you sure the boy is the one that’s on your mind?
Anna: You’re going to open the crates, aren’t you?
Clemens: Yes. Go back to the shed and bolt the door.
Anna: We are all trapped on the same ship, Mr. Clemens. Are you forgetting it needs to feed because you saved me? I’m coming with you.
Clemens: This thing has killed most the crew.
Anna: Then imagine what it will do if we let it get to London.
Clemens: If we do find your devil, will bullets kill it?
Anna: He has controlled my village for generations. Do you think I have any notion how to kill him?
Joseph: “I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.”
Clemens: Why London?
Anna: Because in my country, there is no one left to feed on.
Anna: We have found where the devil sleeps.
Abrams: What the hell is happening on this ship?!
Captain Eliot: We’re a doomed crew, Mr. Clemens. On a doomed ship. We no longer plot our course. The devil below does. And we all know where he plans to deliver us. To hell, Mr. Clemens. Each of us, one by one.
Anna: Dear Lord, take this sweet boy. May he never again be hungry, never be cold, never be scared. This world is cruel and uncaring. May Toby find his next home to be a kinder one.
Captain Eliot: I saw him move. He’s alive.
Clemens: Captain Eliot, the boy has no breath in his body. He has no heartbeat. He’s gone.
Wojchek: [to Clemens] You seen what I seen, and you still want to plan. This ain’t Cambridge, astronomer. You can’t think your way out of this one.
Clemens: Captain Eliot once asked me over dinner what I most desired. I told him I wanted the world to make sense. I need this world to make sense, Mr. Wojchek. This beast, and mark my words, it is a beast, deep down, I need it to make sense too. I need to know why it is the way it is, and why it does what it does. And then I will remind the beast that it, like the world, has absolutely no hold over me.
Wojchek: And then?
Clemens: And then I want to kill the cursed thing.
Clemens: What, you want us to wait around, eyes in the dark, served up and ready for dinner?
Wojchek: It ran from our guns in the night. It won’t risk an outright attack.
Anna: Running? It was not running. It was rationing.
Clemens: Rationing? One a night.
Clemens: It no longer needs us. So we have to kill it before it reaches the coast.
Abrams: Kill it? We can’t even find it.
Clemens: No, we can’t. It is why we’re to set a trap.
Anna: We must sink the ship. With him on it.
Wojchek: Scuttle the Demeter? Have you gone mad?!
Wojchek: This is my home. And I won’t tear her apart for this f***ing thing!
Clemens: I grew up on a boat, Mr. Wojchek. Just like this one. My father was a deckhand his whole life. He always told me that the ship, the living part, is the men on board. The crews. The stories. Everything else is just timber and nails.
Wojchek: No! This is my home. She’s mine. It’s going to be me.
Clemens: [referring to Anna] When it comes for her, we’ll have a clear shot from the crow’s nest. We sink the ship and send the wounded beast to a watery grave.
Captain Eliot: People need to know. Logs. There needs to be a record.
Clemens: The Demet is lost, sir. We’re abandoning ship.
Clemens: We’ll leave the beast a sinking ship as a farewell gift.
Captain Eliot: He comes to me. He whispers to me behind my own eyes. He can bring Toby back. He took him away. He can bring him back.
Clemens: Captain, come to your senses. You know that’s not possible.
Anna: Captain. You have seen him as I have. You know deep down that is not all. When I dream, sometimes I remember who I was. Before him. But most often, I think of the box he kept me in. How every time he came for me, and tore into my flesh, drank his fill, dirt would seep into the fresh wound, filling me up.
Captain Eliot: You cannot sink the Demeter.
Anna: Picture Toby’s face. His smile, his laugh. And think of that dirt filling him up too, because that’s what the devil does. He takes what is good, and what you love, and he uses it, and he twists it, and he rots it from within. Do not let him do that to the memory of your boy.
Captain Eliot: I will sail the ship out to sea. And when she finally goes, the monster will never be able to reach the home I knew. That Toby knew.
Clemens: Captain, there’s no need for you to stay on board the Demeter.
Captain Eliot: Where would I go, Mr. Clemens?
Anna: [to Clemens] We are connected, the devil and I. You are smart enough to have noticed. I can sense him. Feel him somehow. He feels it too. He will come for me. And while he’s focused on me, you know what to do.
Clemens: What is it?
Anna: He know, Mr. Clemens.
Clemens: Dear God. It has wings. It’s coming!
Captain Eliot: [as he encounters Dracula] I renounce you, devil!
Captain Eliot: [as he’s dying] Mr. Clemens. Let them know, will you? Let them know I was true, to my trust.
Clemens: I will, Captain. I promise.
Clemens: You want them to believe that you’re a god! You and I both know that you’re not! You bleed like any of us! You sleep in dirt! You feed! Above all else, you feed! You want us to fear you! Underneath, you’re afraid! You’re afraid of what lies on the other side, as any other living thing!
Anna: [to Dracula] You are in my head. In my blood. You have damned me to hell!
Clemens: I do not fear you.
Dracula: You will.
Anna: [as she’s turning into a vampire] I have known for days now. I’m sorry.
Clemens: Another transfusion.
Anna: Would only delay the inevitable. We both know that.
Anna: My whole life, my people, the devil, they chose for me. I choose this. No one else.
Clemens: You saved me.
Anna: And you me.
[she floats away from Clemens and burns to death as the sun rises]
Clemens: I’ve arrived in London. The creature hunts for blood somewhere in the city, but I know where it lays to rest during the day.
Barmaid: It gets dark on the moors. If I was you, I’d wait till morning.
Clemens: You know, miss, I was thinking the same thing.
Clemens: I have finally seen the true darkness that dwells beneath the surface of this world, the evil that neither science nor reason can explain. Yet I have also seen its beauty and those willing to give all to protect it. And so, I will pursue this foul beast. And I swear by those who have given their lives that I will extinguish this blight and send it back to hell.