Let's face it, this movie *is* a cheap shining-rip off, but somehow it felt pleased watching it. As someone stated earlier on this board, this is a family-friendly movie, no bad language etc, which makes it even more suitable for TV use. This typical American TV movie format is boring and it certainly makes it challenging for the filmmakers to do something even remotely original. I find it hard to put into words, but there was something quite fresh and genuine in this, I dunno if this is a training work by someone in film school, but I must say that the basics of story telling were all right. The film doesn't pretend to be more than it is, the lousy cgi and a few mistakes (i think I saw the shadow of a camera in a stairway sequence) feels OK in this type of movies where filmmakers usually misuse their talents a lot more with tons of low budget action sequences.
The soundscapes were sometimes a bit overdone, the sick whispering didn't leave the "walking in alone in the dark"-sequences alone for a second, with a bit more patience, silence mixed with normal sounds that one could expect to hear on a shipwreck could have been even original. I watched the movie from a Scandinavian r2 DVD edition that featured stereo ac3/dolby digital sound. Unfortunately I had to use headphones, I can't say anything about the usage of Dolby Surround.
The actors were used well, not the best ones around, but by limiting their communication to TV-series type dialog you had the characters in their right elements and on the very edge of what you can expect from them.
