� is essentially 'Event Horizon' at sea. See, Irish geezer Gabriel Byrne (still looking no older) is the captain of a salvage crew who's hired to retrieve an 'invisible' ship anchored eerily in the Bering strait, so off his amicable enough team toddle and lo and behold the ship turns out to have been missing-in-voyage for the past 40 years, yet here it is all of sudden� rusted to fuck but still worth a fortune. So they amble aboard and unlucky for them it's over-run with the peed off ghosts who were, oh-er, murdered. And cue Byrne's salvagers' one-by-one deaths at the hands of temptation as the claustrophobic steel monster plays with their minds and tries to prevent them from getting away with a secret cache of shit hot gold that mysteriously lurks deep in the hold.
The killings are downright harsh, as one guy dies of motor-shredding dismemberment and another of long fall heart-spearing, while the one lady crew member retains her sanity (despite conversing with an innocent girl 'survivor' of the mass slaughtering back in 1962) to survive.
� So, the ship ultimately blows up behind her and puts the Titanic to shame by sinking in 3 seconds as opposed to three hours. And despite the ending seeming rushed (given the fact the director had exhausted all the Event Horizon-inspired ideas?), the final open-ended scene is a clever masterstroke� even if, again, it's blatantly nicked from the aforementioned horror masterpiece.
Don't get me wrong, 'Ghost Ship' is great. It's just that the predictable storyline is old-hat and genuine originality's deceased. (STEVE RUDD)