Since its publication in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has grafted the image of Count Dracula into popular imagination. Every year, newer tales surrounding the myths of vampires haunt horror fiction. The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023), directed by André Øvredal, is another addition to the supernatural horror genre that chooses to go back to Stoker’s novel and recount one of its epistolary episodes in the form of a two hours-long movie.
Øvredal brings to life a huge cargo ship, the Demeter; tumultuous seas; gory deaths; and THE Dracula (this time in an all-new avatar!). The epistolary nature of the account has been tweaked to make it a third-person narrative, and the screenplay has not necessarily lost the chills of horror in translation. If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend you enjoy this immersive horror experience before returning to this article. SPOILERS ALERT!
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film opens with a bunch of police officers and locals discovering the Demeter, a massive cargo ship, along the shores of Whitby, England. The individual who initially boarded the ship to search for survivors reports a lone diary belonging to Captain Elliot and finds the ship completely deserted. To everyone’s astonishment, the diary contains a dire warning about a strange creature that is the reason behind the ship’s destruction and is a potential threat to the lives of all people in England.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) then transports us back in time by four weeks, taking us to the moment when the Demeter was being loaded with assorted cargo in a port city of Romania. Here, during the recruitment process, Clemens (played by Corey Hawkins) – a black man and trained doctor from the University of Cambridge – draws attention by wishing to join the crew onboard but is rejected.
There seems to be some rumor about the unmarked cargo crates being loaded into the ship. One of these boxes bears a dragon symbol, detectably unsettling one of the local laborers, whose negligence could have killed the ship’s captain, Elliot’s grandson, Toby (played by Woody Norman), if not for Clemens’s prompt and timely action. Clemens is allowed to sail with the Demeter’s crew as a display of gratitude.
As the majestic vessel sets out towards England, Toby shows Clemens around the various departments and compartments enshrined within the ship’s frame, from where the cargo is kept and the animals are caged to the kitchen. Meanwhile, calculations predict that the destination will be reached within the designated timeframe, thus earning the crew a bonus; this cheers up the crew. However, the same night, something uncanny happens on the ship, leaving the animals screaming for life.
Toby’s pet dog, Huck, and all the animals in the cage are killed, and all the mice disappear from the ship. Clemens finds one of the cargo boxes damaged, finding the body of an ailing young woman inside it. He takes responsibility for ensuring this woman’s safety, who we come to know as Anna (played by Aisling Franciosi). He keeps her alive by sharing his blood and his share of ration. Some crew members regard Anna as an ill omen or at least as a source of misfortune, advocating for her abandonment at sea. Unlike his contemporaries, Clemens prioritizes knowledge and scientific exploration over superstitions.
In time, Anna’s health improves, and her account unveils a connection between the strange (but malevolent) entity plaguing the Demeter onboard and her own captivity. Anna’s testimony reveals that there is a vampire on board who is bloodthirsty for humans, and Anna is one of his perpetual sources of blood consumption. Due to the scarcity of fresh human blood in Romania, Dracula set sail for England, concealing himself within a cargo crate.
Dracula – an almost alien-like, hideous creature with wings – emerges from his confinement every night and starts claiming his victims, the ship’s crew. As more and more crew members start disappearing, the crew is left to grapple with the truths of Anna’s claims. In fact, Wojchek (played by David Dastmalchian), the next-in-line successor to the position of the ship’s captain, and Clemens are two of the only people still rooting for rationalism and science in the face of this devil.
Olgaren (played by Stefan Kapicic), another crew member, is only bitten by the vampire, turning him into a similar creature on the following night when Toby is injured. Olgaren meets his end by flaring up on the ship’s deck when the sun’s rays touch his skin the morning after.
Similarly, after Toby’s demise, his grief-stricken grandfather tries to hold on to him. Sadly, the sun rises, and Toby’s lifeless body bursts into flames and injures Captain Elliot before being pushed off the deck into the water. One of the crew members even tries to escape the ship on a lifeboat, but the vampire kills him before the latter can escape to safety. As the ship steers closer to the coast of England, the remaining crew gears up to battle it out, even if it means losing their lives, with Dracula.
What is the Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) based on?
Øvredal’s movie is based on the log of the Demeter from Bram Stoker’s magnum opus, Dracula (1897). This portion of the tale was a necessary plot elongation for Stoker to bring Dracula and everything it symbolized from the remote regions of Transylvania to the bustling streets of London, England. It also showed how Dracula wanted to lord over the whole of Europe (perhaps even the whole earth) unless it was stopped in time. This portion of the story is also epistolary, i.e., it has been written in the form of a diary/logbook entry by the captain of the ship Demeter, responsible for carrying Count Dracula’s cargo from Transylvania to London.
Why is the ship called Demeter, and what is its significance?
One can only imagine that the ship has been named Demeter, ironically symbolizing that it carries death instead of the bounty of life. Demeter is the name of an Olympian princess and one of Zeus’ sisters, who is popularly associated with fertility, agriculture, and crop cycles. According to research, Demeter, the ‘grain goddess,’ is also associated with the underworld through the regenerating cycle of death because some ancient Grecian cults were rooted in the agrarian belief that new life springs from what is buried in the earth.
The significance of the name of the cargo ship in The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) stems from the fact that it is literally the harbinger of death and destruction in the lives of the English people. It carries healthy, young, enterprising souls and one representative of evil, where the latter overrides the religious beliefs and scientific knowledge of the age.
Who is Anna, and What Happens to Anna in the End?
Anna is discovered in one of the cargo boxes that the Demeter carries to London. Clemens says she is suffering from an infection requiring regular blood transfusion to be cured. Later, she reveals to the ship’s crew that she is one of the many mortal bodies whose blood Dracula feeds on for sustenance and that she was sacrificed to the Count by her people in her village back in Transylvania.
Although Anna is solely responsible for saving Clemens’ life, she realizes in the end that her blood has been infected by Dracula, which means any contact with sunlight could flare her up in flames. She willingly chooses this fate for herself, letting the first rays of dawn consummate her in fire after trying her best to keep Dracula from reaching the shores of England.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) Ending Explained:
Which of the Crew Members Survive in the End?
When they are one day away from the coast of England, the remaining crew members come up with a plan – they want the vampire to die (they don’t know how it works yet) and/or keep the Demeter from reaching the coast so that Dracula cannot reach the shore. When Clemens tries to convey their plan of abandoning the Demeter after trudging a hole into it so that the vampire can sink along with it, the latter tries to kill Clemens out of rage. Later, he retreats after being moved by Anna’s emotionally charged plea.
Later that night, Dracula kills Captain Elliot, who even employed a crucifix to no avail, and Wojchek, thwarting their plan of either sinking the ship or setting it ablaze. It proceeds to kill Clemens next, but Anna puts up a fight against the vampire and saves Clemens in the nick of time.
Dracula remains trapped onboard the Demeter while Clemens and Anna fling themselves into the sea, keeping themselves afloat with the help of a broken mast. The Demeter is spotted in the stormy seas from the lighthouse at the coast of Whitby, England, taking us back to where the story had commenced. It is also revealed that Anna has been significantly affected by Dracula’s bites, rendering her beyond salvation. In a final act of self-sacrifice, she embraces her death by parting from Clemens and burning to death from the sun’s first rays the following morning.
We realize that despite the English authorities’ assumption that all crew members aboard the Demeter had perished, Clemens emerges as the sole survivor, enduring the harrowing ordeal. Before the film closes, we find Clemens at a bar in London inquiring about the location – Carfax Abbey – where Dracula’s cargo was destined. He seems to know in his heart that the vampire has survived the sea journey and intends to visit its new home.
Interestingly, Count Dracula is present at the same bar, bearing the cane he had spotted in the dragon-seal cargo and hiding under plain, black clothes. He is vengeful and swears to fight the vampire and admonish its existence from the face of the earth. This either hints at a sequel to The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023), or it could hint at the fact that this story is only a tiny part of a larger Dracula narrative yet to reach a climactic showdown.
