“Ghost Ship” seems to get a “strictly average” rating from most horror geeks but I’ve always enjoyed this one. I’ve seen it quite a few times over the past couple of years and it holds up to repeated viewings. The plot is pretty standard (a salvage crew discovers a long-lost cruise ship, only to find a dark secret once they’re aboard) but the film is effectively creepy, surprisingly gory (especially in this age of watered-down, PG-13 rated “horror”) and satisfying from beginning to end.
The opening scene (set during the doomed ship’s final voyage, when a tightly wound cable snaps and slices through everyone on an outdoor dance floor) sets the tone immediately and makes you go “Whoa! What the hell just happened?” From there we move on to the present day, when a mysterious man approaches the crew of a beat-up salvage boat in a dockside bar and shows them aerial photos of what looks like an abandoned ship adrift in the open ocean. They take him up on his offer to investigate the find, which turns out to be the long-lost “Antonia Graza,” an Italian ocean liner that disappeared without a trace 40 years earlier with a full crew and 600 passengers aboard. Naturally, when the salvagers board the mysterious vessel, weird things start to happen very quickly, so the crew desperately needs to get off the ship before it claims them all as victims.
The real star of this movie is the haunted Italian ocean liner. The set design of the Ghost Ship is very effective, showing just how creepy a deserted boat would look after 40 years adrift at sea. Though it must’ve been a beautiful ship in its heyday, the Antonia Graza is now a rusty hulk, moldy, slimy and covered in rot… all of which only hides the true horror that happened within its walls for so long. Juliana Margulies of “ER” fame is the first salvage crew member to realize that All Is Not Right aboard this ship when she encounters the ghost of a little girl who was traveling alone on the ship’s final voyage. As Margulies’ crew members poke around in the bowels of the haunted ship, they discover a stash of gold bars in the cargo hold. Naturally, greed makes everyone go a little crazy while the ghostly little “Katie” shows Margulies what happened to the crew and passengers of the Antonia Graza (in a lovingly shot, action packed, blood-splattered massacre scene that even the most hardened gorehound will have to admit is pretty frickin’ cool). Gore fans will get a kick out of the various death scenes in “Ghost Ship.” We see a swimming pool full of blood (shades of “The Shining!”), people being impaled on giant hooks, guys getting sucked into giant gears, and even some hot Ghost Boobies, until eventually Margulies finds herself facing off against the guy who brought them to the ship in the first place, who is of course Not What He Seemed To Be.
Horror fans have been unjustly dismissing this flick for far too long. I say check out “Ghost Ship” and judge for yourself. It’s a well made, disturbing little roller coaster ride that may well put you off of the idea of ever taking a leisurely ocean cruise.
