Ghost Ship
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Ghost Ship is a 2002 supernatural horror film directed by Steve Beck, and starring an ensemble cast featuring Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Margulies, Ron Eldard, Desmond Harrington, Isaiah Washington and Karl Urban. The film follows a marine salvage crew in the Bering Sea who discover a mysterious ocean liner that disappeared in 1962.
Plot
In 1962, MS Antonia Graza, passengers dance to the song "Senza Fine" sung by Francesca, the ship’s lounge singer. Suddenly, a spool snaps, and the wire whips across the dance floor, bisecting the passengers and crew. Katie, shorter than the adults, is spared due to the wire passing over her head, leaving a little girl screams over people's courpse.
In 2002, forty years after an Italian Ocean Liner named the SS Antonia Graza mysteriously abandoned due to all of the passengers and crew, except a few of them, were murdered in May of 1962, an expedition group investigates the ship and weird things begin to happen (e.g. ghosts are seen inside the ship).
Why It Sank
- The poster is a blatant rip-off of the one used for the 1980 film Death Ship with George Kennedy.
- Characters that aren't memorable.
- Poor story.
- The film isn't even scary at all
- The special effects are extremely poor.
- The plot is a rip-off of Event Horizon, with an idea of a large ship mysteriously disappearing and later being found years later with strange things happening aboard.
Redeeming Qualities
- The film does have some potential for being an interesting horror story.
- The idea of a horror film taking place on an abandoned ocean liner is pretty interesting.
- The opening scene where spool snaps, and the wire whips across the dance floor, bisecting the passengers and crew except a little girl is amazing, and it is the only genuinely scary part.
- Although the poster is a rip-off of Death Ship, it actually almost looks very creepy.
Reception
Ghost Ship received mixed-to-negative reviews by critics and audiences. According to internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Ghost Ship has a 16% approval rating based on 129 reviews. The critical consensus states that "With a plot as creaky as the boat, Ghost Ship fails to deliver the scares". Similarly, Metacritic gives the film a score of 28/100 based on 25 reviews and rates the film as "generally unfavorable". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.