Should have been called 'Not Many Ghosts Ship'!

In 1962 a luxury Italian ocean liner disappeared with all it's crew and passengers. The liner was the Antonia Graza and the film opens with an on-deck party. The passengers are mingling with the crew, champagne is flowing and everyone is on the floor dancing to the sound of an orchestra and sexy Spanish singer. I'm feeling relaxed watching the film, nothing can happen HERE to make me jump can it? Dammit, let my guard down and suddenly a metal cable whips across the deck slicing all the party goers in half making me jump so high I nearly hit my head on the ceiling! Seriously, this is one awful scene. The noise just stops and all the passengers are looking around in confusion, not fully aware that their bottom half is no longer attached to their waist. Then the tops start dropping. Ewwwww, people are still blinking as their bodies separate and one man even reaches to pull his legs towards him as he falls. One little girl is spared, Katie.

The wonderfully talented Gabriel Byrne plays the mean and moody tugboat captain and the leader of the salvage crew, Murphy. He's your typical American skipper - do this, do that, don't argue - and really his character doesn't do anything for me or even add to the film in any way. Actually, none of the characters do. I'd say the strongest character is the team leader (and token female doing a 'mans' job) Maureen Epps, played by Julianna Margulies. Epps also has the corniest lines in the film - 'What's a nice girl like me doing here when I should be raising a family? Well, I'm not nice and these apes are my family.' Cue all the men in the team doing monkey impressions and looking lovingly at Epps. Sickening. lol It's with Epps that Katie (the little girl who avoided been sliced in half in 1962) appears and warns how dangerous it is to be on the ship. Now Katie is a mystery. In 1962 she was roughly 12 years old, no mention is made in the film of her dying but in 2002 she still appears to be 12... and wearing the same dress. Very odd. And even with ghosts talking to them, they STILL remain on the liner. There aren't any characters that jump out as being likeable, Greer (played by Isaiah Washington) would be the only one who I can actually say I felt something for and I think this is because he's originally the one with the misgivings about boarding the ship and his friends talk him out of leaving. Ironically, he ends up with one of the nastiest deaths in the film.

All in all, despite the hype when this film was released last year, it seemed very weak to me. I'm capable of having nightmares for weeks after watching a horror film and have been known to scream like I've been stabbed when something makes me jump in one of these films but Ghost Ship didn't have any amount of the 'jump' factor. The story line was daft (find gold on a creepy deserted ship and hang around to be killed), the characters were pitiful and the death scenes were a mixture of over the top and mind numbingly boring. For some reason, Ghost Ship carries an 18 certificate and I can't understand why it wasn't given a 15 as it isn't THAT gory to give delicate little darlings at 15 (yeah, right!) nightmares. And even if it does, so what? It's character building. If you're after a good horror film, don't bother with this one. If it wasn't for the random appearance of ghosts and ghouls you could be forgiven for thinking this was an action movie rather than a horror flick because there's lots of running about trying to save people and explosions. Look out at the very end of the film, just before the credits, for a spooky little twist to the tale - possibly the only part of the film that surprises you! So watch the very beginning (the mass slaughter) and the very end (the twist) and you can say you've seen the best parts of Ghost Ship.