The John Badham Dracula even starts out with its own Demeter sequence, and it’s a thrilling piece of staging, with a great blood-and-thunder John Williams score to boot. When the major studios can’t even crank out an entertaining Dracula movie, something is terribly wrong.
A couple weeks back I re-watched Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, which compresses its equivalent sequence into about ten minutes. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen Murnau’s original, but it’s probably comparable.
It’s one of the best sequences in the Murnau. It’s always a highlight of every Dracula adaptation that includes the sequence—Tod Browning could have handled it beautifully, if he hadn’t been stuck with such a dull script—and I can honestly understand the temptation to expand it.
Well, I just finished watching THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER and I thought it was great. Loved the creature design for Dracula and how much dread Ovredal was able to lend to the proceedings. Would watch again.
Let’s ride this nuke all the way to ground zero. I demand a crossover sequel costarring Matt Berry called Toast of Stone.
The point about the DTV feel of these kinds of Netflix projects is really acute and I haven’t really heard it presented that completely before. I’d add that these movies are shaped by algorithmic and budgetary responsibilities that constrain them from having the genuine, quixotic texture of a good Saturday Night Special DTV POS, or even one of the looser and more freewheeling of, like, the Hallmark films. Not being very good used to be something you could trade, at least occasionally, for some kind of scrappy charisma that came from also being not very expensive.
Now we get the worst of both worlds. When Netflix spends 200 million dollars making a genuine fiasco of a movie, wake me up.
A delightfully vicious review of mediocrity. BUT! I must point out that Hydrox was the original and Oreo the copy-cat, eventually taking the sandwich cookie crown (possibly because its name didn’t sound like a prescription painkiller.) Yet Hydrox was the superior product, with a crispier composition that had a more pleasing interaction with milk. A more apt theoretical sponsor might be Newman-O’s or SnackWell’s Crème Sandwiches.
Heart of Stone sounds like a real stinker. It's so sad that this kind of generic, indistinguishable, and usually boring-as-hell type content became the new standard for Netflix in the past 2-3 years.
A bit disappointed in seeing such mixed reviews for Demeter. I read the script about a decade ago and thought it was one of the most ready-to-shoot unproduced scripts on the market at the time (at least of the hundred or so that I read), but I guess was just caught up in serious development hell. Will still probably catch it, if not in theaters then certainly when it moves to streaming.
I’m intrigued by the presence of Corey Hawkins, who I saw on Broadway late last year and was profoundly impressed by, but that character description sounds pretty terrible LOL!
They should have filmed “The Route of Ice and Salt” by Jose Luis Zarate instead, an emotionally intense queer retelling of the Demeter story that has a lot more going on than this movie.
The John Badham Dracula even starts out with its own Demeter sequence, and it’s a thrilling piece of staging, with a great blood-and-thunder John Williams score to boot. When the major studios can’t even crank out an entertaining Dracula movie, something is terribly wrong.
A couple weeks back I re-watched Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, which compresses its equivalent sequence into about ten minutes. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen Murnau’s original, but it’s probably comparable.
It’s one of the best sequences in the Murnau. It’s always a highlight of every Dracula adaptation that includes the sequence—Tod Browning could have handled it beautifully, if he hadn’t been stuck with such a dull script—and I can honestly understand the temptation to expand it.
Well, I just finished watching THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER and I thought it was great. Loved the creature design for Dracula and how much dread Ovredal was able to lend to the proceedings. Would watch again.
I will see any theatrically released film involving monster violence, regardless of quality. I'm in.
You're not alone! But it didn't do it for me.
Fair enough. It was just funny to me to turn my phone back on while the credits were rolling and the first thing I see is your negative review.
Yeah. Neither of these looks great and just the absolute doldrums for new releases in theaters as well.
Let’s ride this nuke all the way to ground zero. I demand a crossover sequel costarring Matt Berry called Toast of Stone.
The point about the DTV feel of these kinds of Netflix projects is really acute and I haven’t really heard it presented that completely before. I’d add that these movies are shaped by algorithmic and budgetary responsibilities that constrain them from having the genuine, quixotic texture of a good Saturday Night Special DTV POS, or even one of the looser and more freewheeling of, like, the Hallmark films. Not being very good used to be something you could trade, at least occasionally, for some kind of scrappy charisma that came from also being not very expensive.
Now we get the worst of both worlds. When Netflix spends 200 million dollars making a genuine fiasco of a movie, wake me up.
A delightfully vicious review of mediocrity. BUT! I must point out that Hydrox was the original and Oreo the copy-cat, eventually taking the sandwich cookie crown (possibly because its name didn’t sound like a prescription painkiller.) Yet Hydrox was the superior product, with a crispier composition that had a more pleasing interaction with milk. A more apt theoretical sponsor might be Newman-O’s or SnackWell’s Crème Sandwiches.
“Yet Hydrox was the superior product, with a crispier composition that had a more pleasing interaction with milk.”
Gonna need Cookie Monster to show up and weigh in on this.
Heart of Stone sounds like a real stinker. It's so sad that this kind of generic, indistinguishable, and usually boring-as-hell type content became the new standard for Netflix in the past 2-3 years.
A bit disappointed in seeing such mixed reviews for Demeter. I read the script about a decade ago and thought it was one of the most ready-to-shoot unproduced scripts on the market at the time (at least of the hundred or so that I read), but I guess was just caught up in serious development hell. Will still probably catch it, if not in theaters then certainly when it moves to streaming.
I’m intrigued by the presence of Corey Hawkins, who I saw on Broadway late last year and was profoundly impressed by, but that character description sounds pretty terrible LOL!
Hydrox Cookies Presents Mission: Impossible !!!!!!
Red Notice - I watched this. And I was sorry I watched it.
The Grey Man - I watched 15 minutes of this. And I was sorry I watched 15 minutes of it.
The Adam Project - I did not watch this.
Two Extraction movies - I did not watch these two movies.
Heart of Stone - I will not watch this.
But thank you to the Reveal as always for taking the hit...!
They should have filmed “The Route of Ice and Salt” by Jose Luis Zarate instead, an emotionally intense queer retelling of the Demeter story that has a lot more going on than this movie.