I didn’t originally intend to review Ghost Ship this weekend. I was going to talk about Whistle, which is a great movie with a fun premise, but there’s just too much in it that reminds me of other movies. I’ll probably get back to it at some point, but this weekend, I wanted to focus on what really matters: the films of Karl Urban.  

• Directed by: Steve Beck
• Written by: Mark Hanlon. John Pogue
• Starring: Julianna Margulies. Gabriel Byrne Ron Eldard

The Plot

Ghost Ship is not a subtle movie. It opens with a big, impressive effect that sets up the mysterious ship perfectly. It’s a brutal, bloody ship prone to appearing and disappearing on radar. Nothing could go wrong with exploring it, right?

This is a haunted house story, and a pretty basic one. Not that there is anything wrong with that. A close-knit group enters a cursed location, and reality starts to warp around them as evil reveals itself.  This can take a lot of different forms, from the sci-fi panic of Alien, to the Japanese supernatural surrealist take on Jaws found in Hausu. 

A haunted house movie succeeds on both the strength of its victims and the power of the evil.  Ghost Ship has a pretty great cast: Julianna  Margulies, Gabriel  Byrne, Isaiah Washington, pre-Grey’s Scandal, and a young Karl Urban, are the biggest names here. But the rest of the crew has gone on to notable careers,  including horror staple Emily Browning as the creepy girl. 

The Victims

The characters aren’t as well developed as I really want them to be. For the impact to land correctly, and the tension to really work I want to care more.  Where it works is howthe characters never explain their roles in the crew; they just do them. It cuts down on exposition, where a lesser movie would have a whole “introducing the crew” scene.  There are a few nice character moments. One of my favorites the engineer talking to a framed family photo that’s revealed to be a car. 

Some of the hauntings feel specific to the characters too. But it is a “didn’t think too hard about it” kind of way. The first mate (Washington) rushing home to his fiancé is lured by the ghost of the femme fatale. The aggressive, non-maternal Epps (Margulies) attracts the spirit of the doomed girl.  The sober captain is tempted by alcohol and turns on his crew.  It works because it doesn’t happen to everyone, just enough to get an idea of the depth of the evil, and how it betrays who you are. 

Another interesting character bit is how easily Washington’s character turns aggressive. This is perfectly reasonable given the circumstances of the movie, but way more interesting considering the actor’s off-screen fights with his co-workers. 

It’s not Karl Urban’s best movie, but he has a small but memorable role. He also gets one of the better deaths.

The Twists

Once the crew finds stolen gold onboard, the evil escalates. But the gold is the lure, used to expose greed and trap people’s souls. The villain’s plan is mostly a good one, but he does get kind of undone by his own villainy. After all, he spends a lot of time murdering the people he’s trying to convince to fix his ship. This could have been reworked just a smidge to keep the atmosphere the same.  Also, a fairly major character dies off-screen which is a bummer since we don’t even see a body. 

Most of the uneven tone from Ghost Ship probably comes from the fact that it didn’t start life as horror screenplay. It was something much more twisty and heist-based. After the events of 9/11, producers didn’t want morally ambiguous movies. They switched the plot to be a more defined battle between good and evil. 

Real World Problems

A lot of movies around that time got the same treatment. It’s not uncommon for pre-production or in-development films to work around real-world events, especially ones as large as some of the tragedies we’ve seen in the past twenty years. While I’m not sure that Ghost Ship became a better movie once it became a haunted house movie, other films fared much worse.  And this isn’t a recent thing either. Dr. Strangelove was originally scheduled to premiere the day Kennedy was assassinated. The original script made references to the president being a target, and several scenes were edited before its release. That was in 1964 for those not keeping track. 

9/11 had a particular effect on movies though.  The World Trade Center was digitally removed from multiple films, and the only movies that really seemed to resonate with audiences were fantasy movies. Pure escapism was all people wanted.  It’s really important to note that Monsters Inc. was released in November of 2001, and its theme was how joy overpowers fear. This is, of course, just incredible timing for that kind of message.  None of this relates to Ghost Ship, other than to say that sometimes there are reasons why movies don’t end up as expected that go far beyond studio interference, budget, or the usual. Sometimes, it’s just…the world.

Final Thoughts

Ghost Ship is a fun movie. The actors commit to it, even if the script doesn’t exactly know how to be a haunted house movie. It’s got some great moments, including the opening.  It’s not terribly scary but it is rewatchable. If you want something with serious scares, there are better haunted house movies. If you want to kill an afternoon having fun, give it a shot. 

Ghost Ship is available in streaming