Ghost Ship



Ghost Ship (2002) is a movie someone threw a lot of money at. The sets are huge and detailed, the special effects top of the line, and there are even two huge explosions. All this money is in service of what's essentially a b-level haunted house movie.

A salvage crew patrolling the Bering Straight, led by Gabriel Byrne, find an Italian cruise liner that went missing in 1962. They wander around the halls of the liner, all kinds of expensive scares jumping out of the corners at them. Predictably, they get trapped on the liner and have lots of arguments about how to get off. Meanwhile they get killed one by one by the ghosts that populate the ship. It's utterly predictable, up until the point where a new supernatural menace is revealed, at which point it just becomes confusing. A movie this expensive should really have a better script. Instead we have a crew of what are supposed to be experienced salvage operators, yet only one of them knows salvage law. People continually head off alone on the ship, which is stupid even before the ghosts are revealed. Like the ship itself, the movie just goes in circles for a long time.

The highlight of the film has to be the prologue set on the liner in 1962. As the passengers dance on deck someone releases a guide wire that whips cuts across the deck, slicing everybody in half. But they just stand there for a while before they fall apart, which I admit is pretty funny.

Posted: Sat - November 29, 2003 at      

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