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A group of
random people wake up on a deserted ship
with no idea of how they got there. They're informed
that there are a few simple rules that they have to
follow in order to have a pleasant journey. Naturally,
they are all eager to break these rules and soon
enough they start disappearing, one by one.
From the production company that brought us movies such
as Phantom Force and the similarly titled Lost Voyage
comes yet another haunted ship horror flick with little
substance. All of these three movies are quite similar
and it seems as if they were all made with the same
script as a foundation. Phantom Force is the worst of
the three (I didn't even make it through that one) and
Lost Voyage is the best and the most successful of the
three (even if that's not saying much). Ghost Voyage
gets stuck somewhere in between. For the first hour
this was a complete train wreck (or should I say
shipwreck? - I know, bad joke, I'm having one of those
days) but the final half hour was actually decent
enough to make it almost worth while.
Ghost Voyage tells the story of a bunch of random
people with varying personalities - though since the
movie was shot in Bulgaria (obviously due to budget
reasons) most of the actors have a Russian accent.
Naturally, everyone with an accent is portrayed as a
criminal (prejudice, prejudice) while most of the
American actors are more humble. Anyway so the ship
is haunted. What else do you really need to know? The
rest writes itself. The acting is pretty bad and the
dialogues are worse. For example, a girl points out
that it's odd that all the paintings on the ship are
of ships sinking and then a guy tells her that she
seems to know an awful lot about boats. That's right.
That's how cleverly written this script was.
And of course, since this is a Sci-Fi channel original,
there's obviously a bunch of awful-looking CGI effects
crammed into the movie as well. Apparently awful
CGI effects are now considered to be enough to call
a movie a science fiction movie. Make no mistake, this
is a horror thriller. Nothing sci-fi about it.
If anything it's the absolute opposite of a Sci-Fi
film since it deals with religious content as well
as old beliefs and myths. Anyway, so the movie isn't
scary, it's got a poor plot, it's got no atmosphere
and it didn't even look as if it was shot on a ship,
most of the scenes of the ship looked CGI-made, the
rest just looked like cheap sets. So what did I like
about it? Well the climax is pretty clever and
surprisingly entertaining and it actually made me
think a little about the afterlife. I guess that's
gotta be worth something right? Is it good enough to
check out? Probably not, it almost bored me to death
for the first hour, but if you happen to watch it, it's
not the end of the world.
An impalement and some more, nothing really
worth mentioning.
Sci-Fi original, enough said.
You know the drill, Ghost Voyage doesn't offer anything
new to the plate nor does it try to. It tries to be as
okay as Lost Voyage was but doesn't measure up. It's
been done before and I'm still waiting for a REALLY
good haunted ship movie to show up. Oh well, better
luck next time.
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