Dracula on a Boat

Submission 4,696

Part of a series on Catchphrases. [View Related Entries]

About

Dracula on a Boat is a phrase that humorously describes the concept of the 2023 film The Last Voyage of the Demeter and is a commonly used nickname for the film. The phrase gained popularity as a humorous way of describing and referencing the film shortly before the film's release in August 2023, similarly to The Beach That Makes You Old meme in 2021.

Origin

On April 13th, 2023, an official trailer for the supernatural horror film The Last Voyage of the Demeter premiered on YouTube^[1] (shown below). The plot of the film, which is set in 1897, revolves around Dracula awakening aboard a cargo ship making a voyage from Transylvania to London and stalking its crew.

On August 1st, 2023, X^[2] user @realJaredGilman made an Are You Saying That There's a Chance meme that referenced the film (shown below). The post gained over 1,100 reposts and 18,400 likes and is the first notable meme to describe the film as "dracula on a boat."

Spread

On August 9th, 2023, X^[3] user @WillTheLandMan made a post in which they speculated that if the film had been marketed with the #DraculaBoat hashtag, it would have had grossed over a billion dollars during its opening weekend. The post (shown below, left) received over 300 reposts and 4,100 likes in five days. On August 10th, 2023, X^[4] user @jeremylovesyall posted a meme that garnered over 1,000 reposts and 10,500 likes in the same period (shown below, right).

The phrase "dracula on a boat," used both as a nickname for the film and a concise way to describe its synopsis, achieved massive popularity on X after the film premiered on August 11th, 2023. For example, on August 11th, 2023, X^[5] user @zachsilberberg posted a You Best Start Believing in Ghost Stories meme that received over 750 reposts and 8,700 likes in three days. On August 13th, 2023, Twitter user @kennykeil made a post referencing the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, with the tweet garnering over 140 reposts and 1,300 likes in one day (shown below, right).