A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs.

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

Blistering performances.

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!

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 ****

This decidedly average horror film is reasonably well made on a technical level, but watching it is likely to give some genre fans a serious case of deja vu. It may suit viewers who want no more than an hour and a half of doom & gloom and gore, but it doesn't offer anything out of the ordinary. It never is able to top its opening bloody set piece, which is pretty over the top, amusing, and the only memorable component of this thing.After this opening set piece, detailing the graphic demise of the crew & passengers of an ocean liner in 1962, the action flashes forward 40 years. In 2002, a tugboat / maritime salvage team get wind of the presence of this long lost ship in international waters. Lured in by their potential cash windfall, they set out to find it. Well, they find it, all right, but they also discover a sinister otherworldly presence that is determined to decimate them just as it caused wholesale slaughter 40 years ago."Ghost Ship" does have good sets and decent atmosphere going for it. It has an appropriately dreary colour scheme, and moody photography supervised by Gale Tattersall. The music by John Frizzell likewise helps to make things somewhat enjoyable. The cast do their best with the so-so material: the lovely Julianna Margulies as Epps, a strong female character, Gabriel Byrne, as her father figure / boss, Ron Eldard (Juliannas' real-life boyfriend at the time), Karl Urban, and Alex Dimitriades as assorted crew, and Isaiah Washington as the first mate. Young Emily Browning is good as the girl who tries to warn Margulies of the danger.Watchable enough for 91 minutes but pretty forgettable once it's over. It tends to get less interesting as it goes along, with the characters just abruptly losing any sense of purpose and blindly falling victim to hallucinations and the machinations of the evil entity. It's also hurt by a very annoying and clichéd ending.Five out of 10.

Watched this as I was a big Gay Byrne fan and I also liked Karl Urban from his Xena days. Really struck me as The House on Haunted Hill at sea and I wasn't far wrong but that isn't a bad thing. The poster very much reminds me of the old 80s slasher film Death Ship which I must confess I've never seen all the way through but whose splendidly lurid video cover both scared and intrigued me as a kid. Some quite superb set pieces, the bad taste classic of the dancers sliced to pieces by the breaking cable takes some beating. The little girl ghost is an incredible cliché of horror films but actually works pretty well here, it's a lovely concept that she couldn't be corrupted as the adult ghosts were because she died pure and innocent. The ending is lovely too, for such a dark film we have a happy conclusion with the souls of the dead finally released from their rusting prison and free to pass to the afterlife, whatever that may be, saving the heroine from a watery grave as they do so (very much like House on Haunted Hill 2). It would have been a nice touch if maybe the heroine continued to hold on to Sarah's hands as she ascended skywards only for her to tell her to let go and fall back into the sea, that she still has her mortal life to enjoy (and possibly some work to do to judge by the very final scene, the good fight goes on).A few bad points, Gay Byrne veers on the hammy with his old sea dog routine, he reminds me a little of Captain McCallister from The Simpsons. The old split the crew up and kill them one by one storyline is just too hackneyed for words. Surprisingly little gore though, the most shocking moments are the villains killing off the crew and passengers in 1962, especially Sarah's death which is hard to watch.All told, an entertaining horror and I'd certainly be up for watching the sequel.