hyped garbage

Admirable film.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The ragtag crew of a salvage boat run across an old abandoned ocean liner that turns out to be haunted by the unrestful spirits of people who were all murdered on it back in 1962. Director Steve Beck relates the enjoyable and involving story at a steady pace, adroitly crafts a pleasing spooky atmosphere, and stages the shock scenes with flair and skill (the boffo grab-you-by-the-throat gruesome opening multiple murder set piece packs a wicked punch!). The inspired script by Mark Hanlon and John Pogue offers a few neat twists as well as a valid reason for why the salvage crew can't simply just leave the ship once they realize something is seriously amiss. The sound acting by the tip-top cast helps a lot: Gabriel Byrne as crusty captain Murphy, Juliana Margulies as the gutsy and resourceful Epps, Ron Eldard as the rugged Dodge, Desmond Harrington as antsy greenhorn Ferriman, Isaiah Washington as the easygoing Greer, Alex Dimitriades as smartaleck Santos, Karl Urban as the scruffy Munder, and Emily Browning as helpful ghost girl Katie Howard. The luscious Francesca Rettondini slinks it up nicely as sultry singer Francesca. Kudos are also in order for the excellent art direction, Gale Tattersall's glossy cinematography, and John Frizzell's shivery score. An on the money fright film.

I was extremely surprised by this movie, mostly because of the flashback sequence, the music, and especially the massacre scene. I admit I don't have any idea how that could happen because I know nothing about ships, but that probably helped keep it unexpected for me. The victims' reactions were an eye opener, and leaving Emily Browning in the middle... Creepy. Her life end story line was interesting to me as well because it's not often you see that happen to a young girl, even in horror films. It adds a sense of how traumatizing the experience must have been. Back to the music, it's fairly popular for horror films to use a calming song during the scary scenes, but Ghost Ship gave it some additional flair, in my opinion. Also, My Little Box by John Frizzle was very well chosen. I haven't heard his name tied to anything else, so I'll consider his song in Ghost Ship to be a personal one hit wonder. The scene it was used in didn't hurt it either!

Credit where credit is due. The concept of this film: a salvage crew are hired to recover a 40 year old lost Italian cruise ship that mysteriously disappeared. Had this this film been a psychological horror, it would have been better.Unfortunately, this film has been made like a typical horror with clichéd characters, bad acting and poor dialogue. The main actor Julianna Margulies even admitted later on she agreed to be in this movie because of the original script and was disappointed when she arrived she was going to act out a completely different script. This does not surprise me, there are some elements of good. One example is Gabriel Byrne's character is a recovering alcoholic. We are told that he doesn't drink in a bar scene early on and he stops himself from drinking whiskey (I think it was whiskey anyway) on board the ship only to drink some after the loss of a crew member. It's a shame that this was not developed as it would have given the character depth.Another good element was the relationship between Murphy (Gabriel Byrnes) and Epps (Julianna Margulies). This too is very undeveloped. The relationship between the characters were undeveloped at the cost of trying to make this film more popular. A terrible shame as this would have let the audience develop a bond with the characters rather than a typical horror where there is usually a game of seeing who's next to be slaughtered.As for the supernatural elements, the villain's main goal is to collect souls, so why couldn't he have killed them off a lot sooner? A psychological horror would have made this film a lot more interesting and believable. At most the supernatural should have been implied. Having all "supernatural" encounters have a rational (i.e. hallucination) or supernatural explanation leaving the audience to decide for themselves is also preferable. Overall, I would only recommend this film in the sense that it's interesting from speculation perspective.

40 years after an ocean-liner is beset with tragedy while on a voyage, a salvage crew in the Bering Sea comes across the drifting vessel, thought to have capsized. Director Steve Beck takes a standard haunted-house-at-sea scenario and spikes it with a viciousness that transposes everything else on-screen; the plot, the characters, the performances and the technical achievements of "Ghost Ship" each end up taking a backseat to this filmmaker's penchant for rage and torment (which is something to see but distinctly unpleasant, and difficult to shake off). Beck didn't double as screenwriter for "Ghost Ship" (it was penned by Mark Hanlon and John Pogue, who may be harboring demons of their own), however it's the raw-nerve handling of this bloody tale that one ends up remembering. Rarely have I seen a horror movie of any era wherein the filmmaker's hostility (a deliberate, passionate hostility, one simmering in bad vibrations) completely overtook his own production. ** from ****