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| It's not long before Ghost Ship sinks |
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 | | Warner Brothers | | Ghost Ship has its moments, but ultimately drowns |
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By David Richards
Dave's grade: C -
The same thing happens every Halloween.
Around October, a horror flick comes out on the big screen.
Sometimes they can be worth watching, but most of the time they're not, and Ghost Ship is the fiasco for this year.
Through most of Ghost Ship, you're better off counting candy corn with your toes because the majority is a waste of time. There are, however, a few eye-popping special effects thrown in, ones that hint to us that the director (Steve Beck of Thirteen Ghosts) had, for a few moments, an idea of what he was doing.
The story revolves around the discovery of a gigantic ocean liner. It was found by an Air Force pilot (Desmond Harrington) flying over a desolate area of the Bering Sea.
The pilot tells a salvage crew about his find, the type of crew that specializes in pulling the remains of ships out from the ocean and hocking them for cash.
Of course the pilot wants 20 percent of whatever the ship is worth, and when the captain cuts it to 10 percent, the pilot agrees, but only if he gets to go along.
From the early scenes in the movie, we are told that the ocean liner was an Italian ship known as the Antonia Graza, a vessel which makes the Love Boat look like a bath toy. The passengers on board were killed by a combination of things. Some were poisoned and shot by crew members, while others were decapitated and sliced into pieces by a runaway cable. That happened in 1954.
So now it's 2002 and the salvage crew, led by Capt, Sean Murphy (Gabriel Byrne) and team leader Maureen Epps (Julianna Margulies), take a journey to the ocean liner and go exploring once aboard.
The rest of the film revolves around the crew and what they find. It's about this time when ghosts come into the picture, including one who looks like she was lifted right out of The Shining, and just like that, the credibility of Ghost Ship gets sunk.
Yes, it has it's moments. The beginning sequence of the Antonio Graza and how the passengers lose their lives is fascinating, hard to watch, but fascinating. There is another intriguing sequence that sends one of the salvage crew members back into time and aboard the 1954 version of the Antonio Graza.
With the exception of these scenes, Ghost Ship is too worried about stealing from other movies. There is even a scene where one character's dinner turns into a slew of maggots like in The Lost Boys, that it is always far too comical to venture into the ranks of being genuinely scary.
Rated: R for strong violence/gore, language and sexuality |
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