Ghost Ship
There is a fine line when it comes to supernatural “thrillers” or “horrors.” I say fine line, you could take your stinking clichéd boots down repetitive lane (I’m looking at you Paranormal Activity 4) or you could slice up a piece of engaging characters with plot twists that will scare you right down to your last clean underwear. Ghost Ship ticks enough boxes to keep your juices flowing (your bowels will be intact though.)
(It even has a pun in the poster. And its released at Halloween.)
Ghost Ship starring Julianna Margulies and Gabriel Byrne follows the story of rag tag bunch of sea salvagers who pick up wrecks and abandoned ships, keeping whatever booty that comes with. When Jack Ferriman (Desmond Harrington) approaches them to tell them of the Antonia Graza, a famed ship lost at sea for forty years, the crew are beside themselves with glee and clamber over themselves to get to the boat. However, all is not right within the ship and as soon as they get there spooky goings on start to occur and the crew are picked off one bye one……
(cue dramatic music.)
Why Is It Bad?
Two of them are named Dodge and Munder. Really!
Ok. So the characters within this aren’t as multi-layered as one would like. In fact, they all fit some horror story category. There is Epps (Margulies) the only woman who is butch enough to make Ripley run for cover, Murphy (Byrne) the flawed and drunken leader, the token black guy, the token Spanish guy and the two fools where one of them is secretly in love with the woman. It’s hardly rocket science; just piecing together bits and bobs from other films. There is even the ghostly girl (Emily Browning) who appears dramatically around the ship. And really, the acting is so hammed up that it is hard to take seriously.
Ghost Ship kind of fell off the radar because it seems like every other story floating about (pun intended) except this time it’s on a boat. Because we were sick of houses, cemeteries and abandoned things on dry land. Ghost Ship was meant to set sail to new horizons but sank and was washed up on forgotten island (all puns, fully intended.)
Why Is It Good?
The twist that, come to think about it, most of you would probably guess from the beginning. It’s not so much the twist on who the bad guy really is, that’s obvious from word dot but it’s the way they reveal it that’s so good. Set to a chillingly awesome piece of music (My Little Box by John Frizzel,) the flashback, the motive and the actually reasoning to their ever being a ghost ship is so delicious that you can’t help but eat it up. It’s really the final third of the movie that makes Ghost Ship an unforgettable thriller piece.
Just watch the video below; it’s the climatic reveal the whole movie is really building up to. If you don’t like spoilers then don’t watch but honestly, this is what pulls the movie from dismay to “huh, this is awesome.”
Ghost Ship isn’t going to make any waves in your DVD collection (I’ll stop now….) but it certainly hits some points within you and stays there for a while.
This is one guilty pleasure that certainly makes a splash.
I couldn’t resist.
TTFN
Cookie.