GHOST SHIP

By: Abbie Bernstein
Review Date: Friday, October 25, 2002

There are times when GHOST SHIP recalls THE SHINING, which is all to the good, even though it takes place (per the title) on a ruined ocean liner rather than a hotel. The movie has a tendency to spell things out that will strike some viewers as endearing and others as absurd (and still others as both) in any event, it has an underlying mythology for the haunting that is moderately original. It also has, going in, a great answer to the question of why the characters don't just quit the poltergeist-plagued premises they are on the open seas.

A prologue, done in best '60s period style, sets us in the year 1962 aboard the Italian luxury ocean liner Antonia Graza, where wealthy guests dance on deck to big band music. The party is interrupted by a thoroughgoing horrific incident that immediately engages audience attention.

Flash forward to the present, as the tight-knit crew of the tough little tugboat Arctic Warrior celebrate their latest salvage haul. Capt. Murphy (Gabriel Byrne) and chief salvager Epps (Julianna Margulies) are approached by Jack Ferriman (Desmond Harrington), a Canadian Air Force pilot, who on one of his recon flights has spotted a vast and apparently deserted vessel drifting in the Bering Sea. He'll lead the scavenger team to the ship in exchange for a cut of their haul. The ship, of course, turns out to be our old friend the Antonia Graza, which bears both treasure and the scars of various forms of mayhem. It doesn't take long for the old liner and her residents to start acting up for the visitors...

Director Steve Beck

has a much better handle on cranking up the creepiness here than he did on THIRTEEN GHOSTS (likewise produced by Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis and Gilbert Adler), playing with dark humor without letting it swamp the straight horror content. He and writers Mark Hanlon and John Pogue, working from Hanlon's story, come up with some nifty graphic imagery the opening sequence is impressively bloody and wild enough to hook us straight off, and there's little that can beat the damp, trapped opulence of an abandoned luxury ship for Gothic atmosphere. Beck stages some effective "gotcha" shots (a few of which subvert our expectations by setting up one peril and organically switching it for another) and his music video treatment of a massacre is swift and cool without falling into self-parody.

It's hard to avoid sounding a little silly when delivering horror movie exposition speeches, but the cast are sharp and make everything sound pretty natural. Margulies is a personable heroine and she's backed by a strong supporting cast, especially Isaiah Washington and Karl Urban.

GHOST SHIP in no way reinvents its genre, but it's a perfectly good specimen of an alternative haunted house movie.

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