The Wrong Kind of Ship to Hunt For

 Quite frankly I haven't given Ghost Ship (2002) much thought since I last watched it way back around 2003. It was to me more or less a generic haunted ship film with Hollywood gloss. But that opening was a real horror gem. A motorized metal cord whipped across a room of passengers on a luxury Italian cruise at high speed and bodies split apart, with upper and lower torsos sliding away from each other, eventually dropping to the floor in unison. It is a whopper. Little Emily Browning was just dancing with a kindly crewmember, looking up after his hugging arms loosened, seeing his horrified eyes as his upper head slid off at the mouth to the floor. This grisly setpiece definitely sets up the film with quite a wallop. What happens after just can't quite follow such a masterpiece. I still liked the first thirty or so minutes of the film. I loved the deteriorated wreck, the years and years on the open ocean, located adrift (with a hole) in the Bering Strait, rusting and decaying. It was fun to see this great cast of faces we know, assembling a crew operated by Gabriel Byrne, with Julianna Margulies looking to generate a movie career from her work on "E.R." I think when it is revealed who Desmond Harrington actually is (claiming to be a pilot who took photographs from the sky), with the whole "taking souls" plot emerging, I wasn't as captivated. I remember groaning, in fact. But it is October and it was on AMC so I didn't hate "Ghost Ship" in the past. Some of these revisits (like "Th13een Ghosts") are one-offs, one last watch and afterward I will move on for good. I made no real plans or goals for the month. That was done on purpose so I could feel free from the pressures of the past where I insisted on fitting in these select classics and specific horror films I felt necessary as part of the month journey. Not this year, however. I said I would go with the flow and watch whatever. So "Ghost Ship"--a film I would probably reserve for a Tuesday rental night in May--gets some of the October television real estate. I like Margulies a lot and Byrne is welcome forever just because he's in one of my favorite films from the 90s, "Miller's Crossing". Byrne feels exactly right for the leader of a ship salvage crew with his very deliberate and detailed mind. You can see him working out all the details and strategy in his head while you watch him. He is effortlessly cool, too. If he orchestrates a complicated operation to fix a big hole in a ship, where time is of the essence and difficulty in doing so is obvious, Byrne is quite realistic a leader you could imagine would find a way. It's too bad he agreed to carry along Harrington, who wants Byrne and his crew for a different reason than profit received from dragging in an ancient relic from 1962.

I mulled dropping this last night, but I'll go ahead today. I give it a 2.5/5. The opening setpiece is one of the best the horror genre could ever produce, especially during a rather so-so early Hollywood 2000s.