Ghost Ship (2002)

Directed by Steve Beck. Starring Julianna Margulies, Gabriel Byrne, Desmond Harrington, Ron Eldard, Karl Urban, Isaiah Washington, Alex Dimitriades, Francesca Rettondini, Emily Browning. [R]

Byrne and his salvage crew board a decrepit vessel adrift for forty years near the Bering Strait and discover a large cache of gold bars, but getting it off the boat is gonna be hard because it’s a G-G-G-Ghost Ship! After a prologue that’s simultaneously absurdly stupid and a gruesome delight, it sets up the pieces in a routine yet economical fashion, but as soon as they get to the ship, the movie proceeds to get dumber and duller with every passing scene. The derivative story, driven primarily by The Shining rip-offs anda series of confused flashbacks, stops making any sense at all along the way, and the reveal in the final act is obvious before a single ghost makes an appearance (the actor in question makes no attempt to conceal the so-called “surprise”). Weak and overabundant special effects, no frights, no tension, it just sits there, listless and floating, less like a haunted ocean liner in a moonlit fog than a turd in a punch bowl. Sunk even further into the briny deep by some amazingly poor (and inappropriate) song cues, such as Mudvayne’s “Not Falling” and Gabriel Mann’s “My Little Box”. Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis are among the producers.

20/100