Review: 'The Last Voyage of the Demeter' is a monster story with classic references and old-school suspense

Old-school tension replaces the gore in “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” an entertaining-enough take on one of literature’s most famous monsters.

The opening title cards set the time: 1897, with a sailing ship — the Russian schooner Demeter — crashing on the shores of England on dark and stormy night. No one is alive on board, but one scared young constable brings out the captain’s log, which describes a harrowing encounter with the monster, and the warning “if it finds you, God help you.”

The title cards also let us know the monster’s identity, noting that the Demeter’s log is from a chapter of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula.”

The script — by Bragi F. Schut (“Escape Room”) and Zak Olkewicz (“Bullet Train”) — jumps back four weeks, when the Demeter is getting set to leave port in the Mediterranean, bound for London. Capt. Eliot (Liam Cunningham) and his first mate, Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), hire some new crew members. The one we’re most interested in is Clemens (Corey Hawkins), who trained as a doctor at Cambridge, but has been unable to find work in a hospital because he’s Black. Clemens only gets hired because another new crew member sees the crates being loaded onto the ship and quits, saying the dragon emblem on them is a bad omen.

So with a crew of nine — 10, if we include Capt. Eliot’s 9-year-old grandson, Toby (Woody Norman) — the Demeter sets off on its voyage. But something doesn’t feel right on board, and the feeling is confirmed when the the ship’s dog and the livestock in the cargo hold suddenly die. Wojchek and the ship’s evangelical cook, Joseph (Jon Jon Briones), think there’s a curse. Clemens, a man of science and reason, looks for another explanation.

In the cargo hold, he finds one of the mysterious crates has opened, and amid the dirt there’s a young woman, Anna (Aisling Franciosi, from “The Nightingale”). Once nursed back to health, thanks to Clemens giving transfusions of his blood, Anna tells the crew that something evil from her home country has boarded the Demeter. And after the crew gets winnowed down to the monster, even Clemens comes to believe it.

Director André Øvredal knows how to deliver jump-scare horror — his previous films “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” and “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” are evidence of this. Here, though, he throttles back on the in-your-face horror, opting instead to build up tension and let it snap in measured doses. 

The movie also takes a page from the old Hammer studio horror films, which relied more on character and acting than shock value. Hawkins (from “In the Heights” and “Straight Outta Compton”) is strong in the central role, though he’s often outpaced by Franciosi’s haunted Anna, Cunningham’s soulful captain, and the working-class brusqueness of Dastmalchian — who, with his roles here and in “Oppenheimer,” “The Boogeyman” and “Boston Strangler,” is having quite a year.

Still, one can imagine how much tension might have been had if the audience didn’t know the monster’s identity from the get-go, if landmarks like “Carfax Abbey” had been placed for us to discover. It would have made “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” a more memorable ride.

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‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 11, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for bloody violence. Running time: 118 minutes.