| Review by Jim |
| Plot: A group of unbelievably stupid salvagers set out to find a ship that's been lost at sea for decades and bring it in for some cash. Once on the ship, they find a shipment of gold and things seem on the up-and-up until a gaggle of ghosts have something to say about it. Thus, the descent into idiocy beings. Review: I remember my brother wanting to see this because it was a horror movie with none of that "CG crap" (his own words) for the ghosts, and while I can agree that they go overboard with the computer-generated effects nowadays, if Ghost Ship is the cure for that problem than I'd rather just keep the disease. But why do I hate it, you ask? It's true that I hate it because I could guess what was going to happen ten minutes before it does, and the salvagers are the biggest morons this side of Crystal Lake, and I hate the fact that this movie was so formulated that it could've been typed by a computer. However, it goes deeper than that. What really gets me is that the movie had an okay premise and then the makers completely junked it to have a by-the-numbers horror movie; a horror movie devoid of any ambition, imagination, and most of all: WORK. No care was given to...well, anything in this movie except for the ship's atmosphere. It's a dimly lit, beat-up, gigantic ship; it's just begging to be taken advantage of considering it's a horror movie, but no. We see the same few rooms over and over again and it's just no fun. Ooh, the same captain's quarters we've seen several times before, scary! What could've been a tense, dark, maze-like atmosphere is tossed out the window. Why are you not going to flesh out the one thing that makes this horror movie different, I ask you? The title is Ghost Ship, the least the director could've done is ran with the concept for all it was worth. Granted the scenes with the original ship's crew getting killed were fairly slick, but if I've learned anything from watching Dead or Alive, it's that a few kinetic sequences can't make up for an overall shitty movie. The kills were all pretty bloodless and lackluster at that. Wow, an extremely fake-looking dummy of Gabriel Byrne drowned, I'm scared. Maybe I could've excused that if the characters were fleshed out a little, but they are shallow as they are stupid. And I'm not talking "maybe I should investigate that blood-curdling scream coming from deep within the rainy woods" stupid, that would be giving them too much credit. Tasting a can of food that's over forty years old? Not being a little bit suspicious of a ghost offering you a drink? Going into the same room again after seeing a ghost? On top of that, they don't even react to the ghosts. They're not the least bit scared, concerned, or interested when a ghost shows up. Case in point, while Gabriel Byrne is in the captain's quarters getting stinko, the ghost of the captain appears right in front of him and he has a polite conversation with him. The plot's "twist" at the end is that the guy that brought the salvagers to the ship is a soul collector, and if he doesn't bring the souls back, "management" isn't going to be happy. Ooookay, whatever makes an ending, right? There's a subplot with a little girl that becomes a friendly ghost, but it seems like they just added her for the "aww" cutesy factor. I haven't gone much indepth about the movie because I can't, it's just so generic, barebones, and bland that it's pretty hard not to fall asleep during the movie. My final thoughts on Ghost Ship? It was an attempt to make a generic horror movie with the premise of it being 2001's 13 Ghosts on a boat...except 13 Ghosts is slightly better than this. Maybe if the creators of the movie had put a little bit of effort into the production of Ghost Ship this might've been a decent film, but they decided to chicken out in every aspect. Nonsensical plot, dumbass characters, uninteresting kills, and an overall boring movie is what Ghost Ship is all about. I feel a bad professional movie critic pun coming on: "Ghost Ship is a real sinker!" |
| Rating: *1/2 |
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