Movie Notes: Ghost Ship
Note: This is an entry in the Second Webomatica Contest: So Bad They’re Good Movies
0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating = –3 stars
Starring Julianna Margulies, Gabrielle Byrne
Directed by Steve Beck
The common denominator with bad horror movies is they’re simply not scary. In Ghost Ship, I found this true for two reasons. First, the characters are insanely stupid; and because they get themselves into dumb situations, it’s like, well, what happy place did you think you’d find on a dark, damp, abandoned ocean liner floating in the icy Pacific? Now you’re going to die; ooh, not scary. Second, the evil creature revealed as the mastermind behind the haunty stuff is quite non-scary. The result of un-spooky threats means that which is meant to be suspenseful ends up pro-boring.
Ghost Ship features tug boat with a crew of six, all on varying degrees of the stupid scale. Least stupid is Captain Murphy (Gabrielle Byrne) so I think you know what happens to him before the movie is half over. They’re asked by a random stranger to go check out the recently discovered, abandoned ocean liner Antonia Garza that has been lost at sea for decades. Upon finding the ship and surveying the damage, they plan to repair and navigate it back to land so they can claim whatever valuables it contains for themselves. But as horror movies go, an expected mishap destroys their tug boat, leaving them stranded on the creepy ocean liner.
One guy has a relatively non-stupid idea: build a raft and get the heck out of there, but no, the crew decides to stay. Creepy stuff starts happening — music coming from nowhere, dead bodies floating a pool, and a little ghost girl. In the film’s first flash back sequence, she complains of being bored. My thoughts exactly.
If you’ve seen any other horror movies you know the rest. One crew member is revealed to be the evil, supernatural being that is actually running this whole spook show. You can figure it out from this review, but it’s so mind-numbingly obvious I’m not spoiling anything. The ghost girl inspires more head thwacking — someone on the crew should have seen enough bad horror movies to think: hey, here’s a creepy ghost kid. Maybe we should ask her what’s going on?
Eventually Ghost Ship drifts toward an unsatisfying ending. By that point, I don’t know why any character would care about the gold bars that pretty much got everyone killed. Please skip this one.
IMDB: Ghost Ship
Rotten Tomatoes: Ghost Ship 12%
Oh man, I can’t believe you actually did it. Sorry for putting you through this one…
At least the director hasn’t made anything since. I’ll consider that the silver lining.
I mentioned a friend and I gave this movie the MST3K treatment (on the first viewing) in a nearly empty theater, right? It wasn’t terribly hard.
That woman in the picture was on Snakes on a Plane…I thought I recognized her.
Mike this was a very rough film for me to watch. Luckilly some of the special effects were pretty decent which helped alleviate some of the boredom.
The actress Juliana Margulies was on ER way back when. I kinda wonder if the ambulance she end up in at one point was returning her there …
Even dough, thats true i think this is a great movie. I watched it 4 times in one day.…i don’t know why but to be it is a good movie.I liked the ship in particular and the way the events happened on that ship, i think the actors made a good impression on me while i watched the movie.Wish, i was on that ship myself to get a little closer to the action since i like ocean liners and especially ones that are found floating with a dead eye in the middle of the ocean, rusty, old , worn out well similar to Antonia Garza.The “creepy” girl, well she was not very creepy to me, to me she looked quite let’s say “pretty”, she looked like she knew everything and was gave , well did after that disaster, yes she did mention about being bored but afterwards she was invited to dance with the Capitan of the ship, and we were not invited not to dance but to solve a great mystery.
The music mixed well with the film, making it more believable, and changing my mood from happy to sad to angry and so forth and at the end of the movie it was quite sad that the ship blew up, that lady could of sailed it back to port, but then everyone was free at last after 40 years being trapped on the ship of doom drifting to 4 and a half star from me, nice job on that one.