Why The Last Voyage of the Demeter Sank at the Box Office – MovieWeb

Summary

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a box office disaster. In its opening weekend of release, the film, which is based on the seventh chapter of Bram Stokers classic 1897 novel Dracula, titled Captains Log, grossed a dismal $6.5 million at the domestic box office and will be lucky to reach the $20 million mark throughout its domestic run.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter marks the second failed attempt by the films distributor, Universal Pictures, to mine Stokers novel and revive the Dracula character as part of Universals now seemingly doomed classic monster-verse experiment, following the commercial failure of 2023s campy comedy horror film Renfield, which features Dracula, played by Nicolas Cage, and the Renfield character from the Dracula universe.

While The Last Voyage of the Demeter had a modest production cost of $45 million, the film is nonetheless on pace to be one of the biggest flops of the summer of 2023, as while blockbuster films like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One have certainly become commercial disappointments, in relation to their massive production costs, those films nonetheless grossed hundreds of millions of dollars at the worldwide box office, whereas The Last Voyage of the Demeter is seemingly being avoided by audiences like it was a plague.

While The Last Voyage of the Demeter attempts to deflect the bleakness of the films story with the addition of new characters and an ending that contains at least a semblance of hope, however symbolic, the depressing and tragic source material nonetheless infuses the film with a feeling of inevitability, even for those people who watch the movie without having first read Bram Stokers novel Dracula.

Moreover, for those people who view The Last Voyage of the Demeter with a deep appreciation of both Stokers novel and the titular ships significance within the book, the inevitability of the story's tragic outcome makes the film, despite its genuine qualities, seem both depressing and pointless, as while the similarly bleak Alien prequel films Alien: Covenant and Prometheus distinguished themselves within the Alien film series by answering long-held questions and posing fascinating new questions, The Last Voyage of the Demeter doesnt take viewers in any meaningful creative directions that dont already exist in Stokers novel.

Related: The Last Voyage of the Demeter: How Previous Dracula Films Portray the Horrific Tragedy

Indeed, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is much more similar, both in terms of its creative direction and the disastrous commercial results, to 2011s The Thing, the direct prequel to John Carpenters 1982 film of the same name, as the 2011 prequel, much like what The Last Voyage of the Demeter does to Stokers novel, attempts to blunt the impenetrable nihilism of Carpenters film by introducing new characters, including a potential survivor, whose fate is left unknown at the end of the film.

By following this cynical approach, The Last Voyage of Demeter alienates fans of Stoker's novel while holding no deeper meaning for the uninitiated, as The Last Voyage of the Demeter ultimately reveals itself to be a film with no compelling reason to exist.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter was the only major studio film to be released on August 11, 2023, and the film was heavily promoted by Universal, which attempted to market the film as being like Alien on a ship.

However, despite the fact that audiences have shown a willingness to support a wide variety of films throughout the summer of 2023, from the boundless beauty and optimism of Barbie to the thought-provoking drama of Oppenheimer, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, with its relentlessly gloomy palette and tone, fell into a commercial chasm, as the film, which takes place in 1897, appears to be simultaneously too elevated to energize the core horror audience, specifically in the key eighteen-to-thirty-four demographic, and too gory to interest a more sophisticated audience.

Related: The Best Films about Dracula, Ranked

In this respect, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is similar to Guillermo del Toros 2015 gothic romance film Crimson Peak, which, despite receiving excellent reviews, compared to the middling reviews for The Last Voyage of the Demeter, was too classical and highbrow in its approach to appeal to a large mainstream audience, as reflected in the films disappointing box office performance.

Of course, one key difference between Crimson Peak and The Last Voyage of the Demeter is that while Crimson Peak was a star-driven film with Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston, The Last Voyage of the Demeter features a virtually unknown cast, as the films main attraction is, of course, supposed to be Dracula, whose popular appeal as a horror villain has clearly declined with todays audiences, which seem to now regard Dracula as a genre relic.

The box office failure of The Last Voyage of the Demeter, so soon after the release of Renfield, indeed the seemingly absolute rejection of the Dracula character in the marketplace, would seem to mark the end of Universals long-gestating attempt to create a new cinematic universe based on the classic Universal Monsters film series.

Of course, this cinematic universe, formerly known as the Dark Universe, was intended to begin with 2017s The Mummy, and just as that films colossal failure led to the cancelation of the Dark Universe, its hard to conceive of a narrative in which this would-be universe, under any name, is restarted in the foreseeable future, certainly with Dracula.

Indeed, after The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and 2014s Dracula Untold, its hard to conceive of a scenario in which Dracula is ever featured in another Universal film.

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Why The Last Voyage of the Demeter Sank at the Box Office - MovieWeb