Ghost Ship (2002)

Sadly Over-hyped

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The first must-see film of the year.

Long on visual effects and style, short on plot and characters, this big budget horror film doesn't offer much outside of solid cast and some cleverly gory moments. I loved the 1950s style opening sequence to the film, with Julianna Margulies torch singing on an elegant passenger ship at sea. This scene climaxes with the film's most outrageous and memorable death scene, where an entire dance floor is cut in half when a steel cable snaps loose. If the film had maintained that level of over-the-top shock value, this film might have been better. Instead, like the the first "Blade" film with it's amazing bloodbath opening sequence, the rest of the film is a major letdown. "Ghost Ship" was directed by Steve Beck, who's only other directing credit is "13 Ghosts," which was similarly short of plot, but strong on visual effect and style, although this film's writer is John Pogue, who wrote the underrated "U.S. Marshals" and the also underrated "Quarantine 2: Terminal," but this script about a salvage crew (Gabriel Byrne, Ron Eldard, Isaiah Washington, Karl Urban, and Emily Browning) finding and setting out to loot the titular ghost ship killed off one-by-one in rather unmemorable fashions and amongst a lots of cheap jump-scares. It's kind of fun seeing Julianna Margulies pre-The Good Wife in such a disreputable of genre film, but that's not enough to save this dull horror flick. Horror fans should watch the first 10 minutes of this film, but then turn it off.

Ghost Ship starts out with a lot of gore and blood as in 1962 an ocean liner, the Antonio Graza, whose passengers die in what appears to be a freak accident that caused a tension wire to snap and the metal wire just carved the passengers and split them in two.In the present day Gabriel Byrne plays the captain of a salvage crew which includes Julianna Margulies. A plane pilot cuts them on the deal of salvage on the Antonio Graza that has been spotted and they decide to go for it as the rewards will be ample as the ship contains come gold shipments. The trouble is the ship is also haunted by some supernatural force and the ghost of a little girl reveals what exactly happened to the passengers and crew of the ship.The film opens interestingly and bloodily and the reveal by the little girl is also well executed. As a slasher ghost film it is better than you expect but like a lot of films where you are left in a haunted house scenario it becomes a little mundane as you know the crew will be killed off one by one as souls are salvaged.Like an episode of The Twilight Zone the film closes in a twist of a time loop. The film has some inspired set pieces but the actors do little to make it come alive.

A tugboat crew boards a derelict liner with a view to salvage. Unfortunately, the liner is cursed, which does not bode well for the future of the shipmates.This is a "last man standing" (or should that be "last man floating"?) horror with a very atmospheric location in the derelict, decaying liner. There is a distinct sense of production value, some good names in the cast (with a distinct "before they were famous" element for some of them), an effective enough story for what the film is, and a fair number of gruesome moments, mostly done quite well.I liked the ending (both bits of it), although it won't please everyone.

This ghost movie begins with the brutal and sudden death for passengers of an ocean-liner, a gripping scene that starts the movie off with much intrigue. It then leads to the present day where a salvage crew discovers the long-lost ship in a remote region of the Bering Sea. As they begin to tow it back to land, paranormal events soon happen to them.The story's plot has some creepy and hair-raising moments you've come to expect from ghost/horror movies, and the story takes a turn when the apparition of the young girl reveals herself to the salvage crew and foretells the dark and brutal history of the passengers and crew of the ship. It then all leads to a race for survival for the salvage crew.I thought, though, that the movie's latter half is just a lot of running around and people trying to survive ***spoiler ahead*** the main, evil ghost named Ferriman (Desmond Harrington), who uses gold on the ship as bait to get the crew and passengers, from the beginning of the movie, to turn on each other, resulting in their untimely deaths. This deviates from any surprises or plots twists in the film, all leading to a pretty predictable outcome. However, I thought the ending scene was confusing and leaves a cliffhanger.Overall, it's an action-packed movie with OK acting, but with limited suspense towards the latter half of the movie.Grade C