Le vaisseau fantôme

With visions of riches spinning in their heads, a group of irritating boat salvagers set out to explore what's left of a luxurious passenger ship lost for over forty years on the high seas. Given that this film is a horror flick, the viewer understands from the beginning that the ship has an array of spooky surprises waiting for our adventurous fools.

The initial problem with this film is the salvagers themselves. They are not remotely interesting. They are stereotyped, stick-figure characters inserted to advance the preconceived horror plot.

As a ghost story, "Ghost Ship" lacked suspense, at least to me. The film's gore and hokey supernatural element were overdone, too obvious and direct. To create suspense, the filmmaker needs merely to hint at the presence of a lurking terror, and to slowly build anticipation, on behalf of characters we know and care about. This film thus suffers the same problems that plague so many modern films ... lack of character development and lack of subtlety. The unfortunate irony here is that the film's huge budget allowed the filmmaker to spend money on explosions, stunts, and other elements that actually lowered the suspense.

On the other hand, the set pieces were impressive, giving the ocean liner and the tug boat a sense of visual authenticity. And I liked the plot twist toward the end.

In summary, the film's concept was intriguing and the story had potential. But an absence of sympathetic characters and an overemphasis on expensive cinematic gimmicks combined to lower the suspense, and render a film that was fat and impersonal.

Now this I would call exactly an average film. For me, it landed precisely at the very center of imdb's 10 point scale, right at 5.5. This means that I found exactly as much to like as I did to dislike. There is a bit of inspiration here, but just as much that's stolen from other better horror movies. If it had opted for tone and real fear instead of cheap shocks, the movie could have been great. The story is good enough that it could have been great if handled well. But we do live in these times, and, although there are scholars of the modern era who would try to have us believe that the current generation consists of a bunch of kids who get everything instantly and process it on a billion levels at once, the truth is indeed the exact opposite. No, there is no subtlety here. It would go over your average teenager's head in a heartbeat. Nope, better play it safe and provide us with a gruesome scene up front where a couple of dozen people are sliced in half by a loose cable during a ball. Gore is not scary. I did however produce a dry heave during this sequence, which is more than I can say for any other gore scene that I've viewed lately. As the gore accumulates, I began to appreciate the artistry that was put into the enormous number of deaths. These are some sickeningly creative people, let me tell you. Unfortunately, the director (or screenwriters or whoever) ruins any real potential by revealing every detail about what happened on the titular boat in a fast-motion sequence accompanied by techno music! It's the kind of moment where you just slap your head for the lack of talent involved. And then there was more stuff I liked. For example, the art direction is very impressive. The revelation of one character's identity, while not particularly surprising, is at least somewhat new. I give this film a 5/10, rounding down because I felt the final moment was a bit groan-inducing.

Sean Murphy and his crew are the top salvage experts in the land (well, sea). They have just completed one big job when a pilot, Jack Ferriman, comes tot them with a ship that he has spotted in remote, international waters. It hasn't responded to distress signals and it seems fair game if Murphy will give Jack a cut and let him come along. Murphy accepts and they set off. The fact that the ship doesn't show up on radar doesn't ring any alarm bells with the crew, who board the ship to find a deserted vessel ripe for the pickings. However she has sustained damage and has days before she will sink forever. Diver Maureen spotted a young girl on board is only the first of several strange things to occur and soon the crew find themselves in deeper than they planned.

Opening with a scene so brutal and gory (made all the worse for me knowing it was coming) that I literally couldn't watch, this film had me hooked at the same time as having me worried that this would just be a big gore fest with nothing else to it. Indeed this is what I had heard, having only read negative reviews for this film. However for the majority it avoids this by being spooky, atmospheric and engaging. The plot isn't anything amazing but it does the job. Many reviewers have said it turns rubbish in the final thirty minutes but to me it was still effective even if it did resort to genre by being gorier and more obvious. It will never win any awards for originality or anything else but it is an effective genre movie that avoids the b-movie schlock of stuff like Deep Rising.

Because it is mostly about atmosphere, the cast are only so-so as they are given little to do. Byrne is a good presence but is slumming it so obviously that he should probably have had a slot in his character's back with a studio exec feeding it every few minutes of screen time. Margulies is better as she has more to do and is a more interesting character; she can work at this level and does. Eldard has some terrible lines but does OK with Urban. Washington is better than this but is quite interesting and has a good screen presence. Harrington plays it so obviously that it is hard not to see him coming, which was a bit of a shame. The direction is good and the design/feel of the film is probably better than the material deserves – nicely building up tension and atmosphere as it goes.

Overall then a good genre movie. Better than b-movie stuff, it uses the gore sparingly for the most part and builds up to things well. In the end it may go just where you expect it to and not do anything that special but I found it quite enjoyable for what it was and, in the words of the advert, does exactly what it says on the tin.

The savage team of a tug is ready to rest after the transportation of a platform. When they are celebrating in a bar, the plane pilot Jack Ferriman (Desmond Harrington) offers them the chance of rescuing a passenger vessel vanished in the oceans in 1962. Captain Sean Murphy (Gabriel Byrne), Maureen Epps (Julianna Margulies) and the rest of the crew, tempted by the possibility of a great reward, decides to risk one more rescue operation before going home. Their greed leads them, of course, to a ghost ship, where they are spooked and threatened by ghosts. One of them, a little girl, shows Epps what happened to the passengers and crew during the voyage in 1962. A horrible unraveled secret will haunt the rest of the crew.

Ghost stories usually take place in a haunted house. This one is in a passenger ship. This movie is not in the same level of 'The Others', 'The Shining' or 'The Sixth Sense', but is also good film. The screenplay play has some clichés and is predictable, but the cast, direction and special effects work well. Probably, the fans of romances will not like it, but those who like a ghost story will appreciate this film. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Navio Fantasma" ("Ghost Ship")

Note: On 02 June 2017, I saw this film again.

The third movie produced by the production company "Dark Castle" and managed by Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis, "Ghost Ship" (2002) marks a step forward and constitutes a neat improvement in comparison with the two previous movies, "the House on the Haunted Hill" (1999) and "13 Ghosts" (2001). This can be checked at the level of a meticulous making and quite outstanding special effects. It is all the more positive as with "Ghost Ship", we deal with a B movie. Another good point: the change of scenery. It is a judicious choice to have replaced the threadbare topic of the haunted house by the haunted ship.

If the screenplay doesn't avoid all the Hollywood conventions, neither all the clichés of the horror film, the director Steve Beck makes up for it by shrouding his movie an atmosphere of mystery as soon as the crew discovers the ship. He's also imposing (slowly but surely) a progressive rise of the tension which reaches its climax in the end. The result: we come in for a few real moments of fright and Beck, in the long run puts the spectator in his pocket.

As far as the cast is concerned, there are two surprises. First: Julianna Margulies who for once decided to give up scalpels in the "ER" series and especially Gabriel Byrne. An ambitious actor who isn't reluctant to sometimes act in a horror movie which is potboiler for him like "End of Days" (1999) or "Stigmata" (1999).

It is a shame that the end isn't really satisfying and suits badly to the whole. But no matter, "Ghost Ship" remains a nice little horror movie whose main function is to make shiver. For this, it reaches its goal. One last thing, if the movies that come out of the "Dark Castle" production company keep on gaining in quality, maybe will they create a masterpiece one day...

NB:it borrows a bit from "shining".