It may be the second Dracula movie of the year (and the second from Universal Pictures no less), but The Last Voyage of the Demeter seems all but ready to set itself apart from just about everything it can. Indeed, revealing the outcome of the Demeter‘s fate in the synopsis — albeit being a well-known piece of trivia for Dracula enthusiasts — is a curious strategy for a film that probably wants to have marked suspense in its bag of tricks, and one can’t help but wonder what the game plan will be for the two hours of runtime that lie ahead for it.
Whatever that strategy is, it unfortunately hasn’t struck the right chords with enough critics to do anything more than break even on the consensus; with a 49 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, it looks like The Last Voyage of the Demeter is hit or miss in every sense of the term.
In a solid review from IGN‘s Matt Donato, The Last Voyage of the Demeter was praised for taking full advantage of a beastly, violent Dracula in an R-rated setting, also noting that the film will likely be a feast for those with a love for the Drac actors of yore such as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.
“The Last Voyage of the Demeter should delight horror fans raised on Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and offers an R-rated bite of vampiric brutality for genre fans with a stronger bloodlust.”
In a much more scathing review, however, IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich lambasted a lack of dread and over-reliance on wanton destruction, and was overall left frustrated by the myriad of perceived creative misfires throughout.
“If you’re going to make an R-rated horror wank about Dracula slurping throats with a smile on his face, make sure that the rest of the movie doesn’t suck as hard as he does.”
Luckily for The Last Voyage of the Demeter, however, Stephen King loved it. So, really, what would have otherwise been an entirely polarizing reception is now coming out slightly in the green.
All in all, we can safely chalk up The Last Voyage of the Demeter as the coin-flip horror flick of the summer, depending on how much you value the opinion of one of the genre’s greatest minds of all time. If you’re curious about which side of port bow you fall on, catch The Last Voyage of the Demeter in theaters starting tomorrow on August 11.