It was a clever idea to base a film on the captain's log from the novel Dracula. But none of that cleverness seems to have made it to the screen. They went to some effort creating an authentic environment, but everything else seems rather hackneyed. And there are more than a few moments of superfluous speechifyin and forced poignancy. The boy's death, perhaps the closest the film came to actual tragedy, was dampened by the predictable events that lead up to it. But perhaps the film's biggest failure is that it's just not scary. They wasted a lot of time on hackneyed tension raising tricks , CG gore and scenes that are supposed to shock - not to mention the blaring score telling us it's time to be afraid - but the film never hits the mark. Not for me anyway. The best scares are born in silence. The 'Last Voyage...' doesn't know when to shut up. It feels like a film that was script-doctored to death. Perhaps the tepidity could have been solved if they had not shown us Dracula so soon. If the appearance of monster had been treated like a reveal. We already knew the fate of the crew, so they could have put something unexpected in the tale... something that didn't go against canon. And lastly, I would have rather seen a more human appearing Dracula, one that could have been mistaken for a stowaway at first, and then slowly revealed itself. The monster vamp wasn't frightening at all.
Review of The Last Voyage of the Demeter
