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GHOST
SHIP
4/10
USA 2002 : Steve Beck : 91mins
From the numbnuts production combo behind House
on Haunted Hill and Thir13en Ghosts comes yet another brisk
and cheesy slice of hammy horror. While those two were remakes of gimmicky
cheapo shockers from the sixties, Ghost Ship is supposedly ‘original’…
though virtually everything in it is nicked from other movies – even the
title (a 1943 Val Lewton-produced quickie) and the ‘skull-fronted-ship’
poster image (Death Ship from 1980).
While various key moments “recall” The Shining and Event Horizon,
the main source of plunder is 1998’s guilty pleasure Deep Rising,
as a team of thicko seadog salvagers (including former ER co-stars
Julianna Margulies and Ron Eldard) encounter supernatural-type shenanigans
when they foolishly explore a Marie Celeste-ish ocean-liner. We have to
wade through an endless series of rickety and tediously predictable on-board
‘scares’ (delicious food turns into worms, etc) before all is revealed
in an amusingly loopy slab of last-reel exposition. The final ‘twist,’
however, sees Beck and scriptwriters Mark Hanlon and John Pogue disappointingly
revert to lame-brain form.
As the salvage captain, A knackered-looking Gabriel Byrne proves a poor substitute
for Deep Rising’s Treat Williams, and his whole crew is disappointingly
bilge-water dull - though Two
Towers discovery Karl Urban does a passable Yank accent as a scruffy
‘expert spot-welder.’ They’re all picked off in strict traditional order
(the cheeky Hispanic goes first, followed by the muscular black guy) in
an enterprise that expends its full ration of flair in an entertainingly
gory, thoroughly misleading, body-slicing prologue. This opening is so
much better than the rest (just like Haunted Hill, in fact) that
you do wonder whether director Beck was in charge or whether he passed
on the task to his assistant Brian Fletcher, as Fletcher’s previous credits
include The Matrix and another, far superior, terror-on-the-high-seas
romp, Dead Calm.
14th January, 2003
(seen same day, UCI MetroCentre, Gateshead)
by Neil
Young
Buy Ghost Ship on DVD
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