Ghost Ship (2002)
Directed by Steve Beck
Written by Mark Hanlon, John Pogue
Starring Julianna Margulies, Ron Eldard, Desmond Harrington, Isaiah Washington, Gabriel Byrne
Release Date October 25th, 2002
Published October 24th, 2002
In the last couple years the Halloween Box Office has been quite a let down for horror fans. A year ago it was the dreadfully bad Thirteen Ghosts. In 2000, the awful Blair Witch sequel, Book of Secrets, ruined the franchise. Finally, in '99 there was the not-so-bad House On Haunted Hill, though I stretch to call that a real horror film, it's more of a parody. This year we get our first quality horror release on a Halloween weekend in forever. And yes, I realize I'm stretching the word 'quality' to its absolute breaking point. Ghost Ship has the atmosphere and gore of the best horror films even while having the generic storytelling of some of the worst horror films.
Ghost Ship stars Julianna Marguilies as Epps, a tough as nails co-owner of a salvage tug. Her partner is Gabriel Byrne's Murphy, your typical been-there-done-that salty dog of the sea. Murphy has been on the ocean since he was conceived. They and their crew of doomed character actors, Dodge (Ron Eldard), Greer (Isaiah Washington) and Santos (Alex Dimitriades), are approached by a weather pilot named Ferriman (Desmond Herrington).
The pilot has found a ship that he believes to be abandoned and he claims that he will tell the crew how to find it for a cut of the salvage. Epps and company agree and the crew, along with Ferriman, go in search of this surprisingly large ship, the Antonia Graza, an Italian ocean liner, missing since its launch in 1966. While everyone is concerned about how a ship of that size could go unclaimed, they agree that "finders keepers'' is the rule of the sea and prepare to tow it to shore and claim their bounty. However before they can claim the ship they must repair it and their own conveniently damaged ship, which means one night on the creepy ocean liner.
Of course, from here strange things begin to happen, each crew member begins to encounter ghosts. Epps is visited by the ghost of a little girl who may or may not be a distant relative. Murphy meets the ghost of the ship's captain who tips him off to the fate of his crew. And Greer has a very interesting encounter with a sexy chanteuse in the ship's gorgeous ballroom. From there each character will be led to their death or potential death depending upon their billing. That said, Ghost Ship isn't about where the film is going, it's about how it gets there. And it's the getting there in Ghost Ship that is a stylish and visually-dazzling ride with a surprising amount of mystery and suspense.
My favorite part of Ghost Ship is the opening 10 minutes. As the film begins we meet the guests and crew of the Antonia Graza on its maiden voyage from Italy to America. The grisly deaths of the passengers is shocking and gory and deserving of a place in horror history as one the most memorable horror visuals of all time. Director Steve Beck, who also directed last year's Thirteen Ghosts, a much lesser movie, shows a real flair for set design and effects. Though Thirteen Ghosts was an awful film, it had its moments of visual splendor.
The surprising thing about Ghost Ship for me is how efficiently the film builds suspense via its excellent score. Composer John Frizzel, a veteran of horror films such as I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Thirteen Ghosts, and Alien Resurrection, deftly combines horror screeches with the diva-esque singing of the luxury liner's singer and ghostly murderess Francesca Rettondini. Her haunting voice comes and goes throughout the film as an audible clue of the horror to come. Also credit must go to Cinematographer Gale Tattersall and Production Designer Graham Walker for giving the film a unique visual canvas that actually improves the film's generic story and performances.
It's a recent trend amongst horror films where production design has become as important or in this case more important than story and acting. The same could be said of Fear Dot Com, The Ring and even the most recent entries in the Friday the 13th and Halloween franchises. It doesn't work often but when it does, as it does in Ghost Ship, it is spectacular and makes an average horror movie an above average entertainment.
