Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on October 25, 2002, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
One thing you can say about the Warner Bros./Dark Castle horror films: They’re all great to look at. Continuing in the tradition of House on Haunted Hill’s mansion-cum-asylum and Thir13en Ghosts’ glass spookhouse is the dank, rusty Antonia Graza, the title “character” of Ghost Ship and another persuasively atmospheric abode for evil spirits. As photographed by Gale Tattersall, the sets designed by Graham “Grace” Walker (a veteran of genre fare from The Road Warrior to Pitch Black) convey the right feeling of age-rotted decay. Only trouble is, we’ve seen their like before, which wasn’t the case with Thir13en Ghosts’ sets, and the feeling of déja vù hangs over both Ship’s visuals and its story like a fog. Even worse, not all of the new movie’s models were particularly inspired to begin with; it’s bad enough when you think you’ve seen this movie before, but it’s worse when the one you’re recalling is Virus.
Ghost Ship is one of those movies that leaves you wanting to read the original script; this one began life as a screenplay called Chimera by Mark Hanlon, whose directorial debut Buddy Boy was an ultimately unsuccessful yet intriguingly warped psychological thriller. As rewritten by John Pogue (the Rollerball remake) and directed by Thir13en Ghosts’ Steve Beck, however, the film is a catalog of second-hand horror conventions almost from the beginning. I say “almost” because an opening scene, depicting what happened to some of the Antonia Graza’s passengers, is a well-staged and efficiently disgusting/black-comic setpiece. Then the movie skips ahead 40 years to a salvage crew coming across and boarding the drifting ship, and cue the characters exploring gloomy rooms with flashlights, doors opening and closing by themselves, walls dripping blood and a ghostly little girl who’s handy for exposition.
Generic ingredients can still work if there’s a strong story and characters behind them, but any complexity in either that might have initially existed must have been consigned to the cutting-room floor. The whole idea of the film is that the protagonists are tempted by the supernatural forces on board the boat, but their desires and/or weaknesses aren’t developed enough for their fates to have any resonance. We’re told late in the game, for example, that one character harbors a secret desire for second-in-command Epps (Julianna Margulies), but we’re never really shown it.
Nor do the temptations sometimes make sense. Greer (Isaiah Washington) is defined mostly by his desire to get home to his wife, and his early recognition that something not right is going on—yet he is all too easily lured to his doom by a sexy seductress that he knows is a specter. As a result, none of the actors are able to make much of an impression, though Gabriel Byrne, as the no-nonsense captain whose affection for and protectiveness toward his crew nonetheless shines through, brings a certain gravity to his role.
Beck’s directorial approach has calmed down somewhat from the distracting hyperactivity of Thir13en Ghosts, but despite the visual atmospherics at his disposal, the movie builds neither honest tension nor a genuine sense of mystery. (One key climactic revelation will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention.) Aside from the prologue, Beck’s best work is a montage in which the ghost girl takes Epps on a flashback to the horrible events of ’62—though the effect is blunted by the accompaniment of overamped techno music that might help soundtrack sales but doesn’t do much for the eerie/period mood.
Warners and Dark Castle’s ambition to turn out a modestly priced fright fest each Halloween is a laudable one, though the fact remains that none of their three entries so far has matched the ghoulish brio of these producers’ first (pre-Dark Castle) horror outing, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. And it’s unfortunate that, even as Ghost Ship represents the first DC production that’s not a William Castle remake, it feels even more familiar than its two predecessors.
