#232: Ghost Ship

Release Date: October 25th, 2002

Format: Streaming (Tubi)

Written by: Mark Hanlon and John Pogue

Directed by: Steve Back

1.5 Stars

I wish 2002’s largely forgotten Ghost Ship was better. It deserves to be better, and according to director Steve Beck, it was better before producer Joel Silver got his grubby hands on the script (Silver was famously parodied by Tom Cruise as a raging bully in the 2008 comedy classic Tropic Thunder, and it was Cruise who insisted on wearing fat, hairy hand prosthetics in his portrayal).

As Beck tells it, the original spec script from writer Mark Hanlon was about a crew of four salvagers who find an abandoned ship with a stash of gold onboard. They end up getting stranded at sea, and through cabin fever and greed begin plotting against each other for their own enrichment. That sounds like a promising movie.

What ends up making it to the screen is a pretty hokey ghost story, starring the type of ragtag crew that you’ve seen before in much better movies (Alien, The Thing, etc.). Some of it works, a lot of it doesn’t. The opening scene is terrific, a Final Destination-esque set piece, but the rest of the movie can’t get close to matching those heights. There’s lots and lots of wandering around corridors and abandoned rooms in Ghost Ship (great set designs, it must be mentioned), but I felt myself losing interest as the film slid along. 

By the final scene the movie becomes a nearly charming (but mostly silly) farce.