omething horrible happened on the Italian luxury cruise liner Antonia Graza, which caused her to vanish on the high seas in 1962.
But that's the furthest thing from the minds of Capt. Sean Murphy (Byrne), team leader Maureen Epps (Margulies) and the intrepid crew of the oceangoing salvage tug Arctic Warrior. After six months at sea and fresh from saving a collapsing drilling platform near Alaska, the crew are savoring their victory in an Anchorage bar. That's when they are approached by a pilot, Jack Ferriman (Harrington), who has an unbelievable story.
While on patrol over the Bering Strait, Ferriman has spotted what appears to be a large, derelict vessel drifting in international waters. It's too big to be anything except an ocean liner. Ferriman offers the crew the chance to salvage the ship, a job worth millions. But Ferriman wants 20 percent—and he wants to go along.
Murphy asks the crew if they're ready to go back out to sea. "I've seen some strange things in the Strait," Murphy says, but adds, "but I do know one thing. The sea offers you an opportunity, you take it."
The crew agrees, and the Arctic Warrior sets sail again into arctic waters, reluctantly bringing the mysterious Ferriman along. On a rainy night under a full moon, the Arctic Warrior cruises along in apparently empty waters. Until it comes up on a ship that appears almost as if out of nowhere.
Stopping abruptly, the Arctic Warrior heaves to abeam the huge ship, which bears the name Antonia Graza. Murphy recalls the story of the luxury liner that disappeared without warning 40 years earlier. But for the crew, the find means just one thing: They're rich. Clamoring aboard, they are oblivious to ominous signs: bullet holes, missing crew and passengers, a cigarette still smoldering in an ashtray. When one crewmember nearly falls through some rotted decking, Epps rescues him, but sees something she shouldn't in the ballroom below: a little girl. As quickly as Epps sees her, the girl vanishes.
That's not the only problem. The Antonia Graza is taking on water and threatens to sink unless the crew can fix her. But then things start to go wrong. ...
Giving cheap horror movies a good name
Ghost Ship is the third film from Dark Castle Entertainment, the low-budget genre label created by producer Joel Silver (The Matrix) and director Bob Zemeckis (Back to the Future), and the first not based on a classic horror flick by schlockmeister William Castle. But as directed by former commercial helmer Beck, Ghost Ship shares many of the qualities of Dark Castle's two earlier William Castle remakes, House on Haunted Hill and Beck's own Thirteen Ghosts, highlighted by what is rapidly becoming Dark Castle's signature style.
The company's films might best be described as expanded episodes of Silver/Zemeckis' former HBO series Tales From the Crypt, enhanced with feature-film production values, movie stars, a few extra bucks and lots more gore. The Dark Castle style is breezy, irreverent, slickly horrific, over the top and visually imaginative. It's enough to give cheap horror movies a good name.
In this case, the film's wit shows from the first frame, featuring credits in pink script and music as bubbly as champagne, as if the movie is going to be a 1950s Doris Day romp. As the camera swirls around ballroom dancers in 1960s-era formal wear and an Italian chanteuse in a red dress, the audience squirms, waiting for the inevitable anchor to fall. And boy, does it, in a sequence that is as horrifying and gruesomely frightening as the opening credits are frothy.
From there, Beck cuts to a dizzying modern-day montage of underwater rescue, involving the crew of the Arctic Warrior. The movie then bogs down a little until the story gets truly underway and the crew lands on the rotting decks of the Antonia Graza. From there, Beck constructs a mostly entertaining variation on the haunted-house genre, and while the film contains few surprises, it manages to stay afloat without sinking into too many cliches.
As might be expected, most of the characters are cartoon figures whose primary purpose is to be boat fodder. Margulies does as well as she can in a physically demanding role as a sort of cut-rate Ellen Ripley. The estimable Byrne seems very annoyed to be in this movie at all.
Beck appears to be most comfortable cutting together the action sequences, such as a mystical reconstruction of the smashed ballroom or the very clever flashback montage near the end of the movie. He is less sure with the dialogue and character scenes and squanders some narrative tension by misjudging the audience's sense of foreboding. In general, the movie feels as if it's either speeding ahead at full throttle or sitting dead in the water, but never sustains a nice cruising speed.
