This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for an old horror film and I’m afraid this one was not any good. It can feel weird calling a 2002 film old but that’s just where we’re at by this point. Ghost Ship is one of those titles that relies on jump scares and a ton of over the top violence without much of a story to back it up. You’ll be shaking your head at the film right from the start and not even the rock music can save this one.

The movie starts with a bunch of characters enjoying a party aboard a giant boat when everyone is murdered after someone cuts one of the ropes aboard the ship. The only survivor is a little girl. Many years later we cut to a group of salvagers. They find old boats and put them back together for profit. A guy shows up and tells them about this giant boat he found, and it is the one from the opening scene. Sean and his crew decide to head out and find this boat because it will be an absolutely massive payday for them. Salvaging is a tough job since you are all by yourself out at sea but they are confident that they can handle this. Unfortunately, the boat may be more than it seems.

So you’ve got the general setup there and being all alone at sea with a ghost ship definitely has a solid setup as far as the atmosphere goes. There just aren’t many positive elements in the film to really set your hat on. The violence for example was crazy right from the opening scene. After that the characters all tend to go down in really painful ways and then we had an extended cut at the end about how everyone on the ship was gunned down. Right from the start you get to see that this film is going to be super intense in all of the wrong ways.

Occasionally you’d have a decent fake jump scare like when two members of the crew decide to scare Maureen for no reason. I mean it made those guys look pretty bad but I guess nothing really scared them. To be able to lock yourself in an empty room and seal yourself in a meat wrap just to scare someone is a crazy high level of bravery. Too bad it couldn’t have been used for something a little more productive right? Maureen had already gotten a number of real jump scares by this point so I guess the ghost was being really selective.

The film makes the bold choice of having a ghost leader as opposed to this just being a bunch of general spirits running around. I’d say that actually worked well though. I’ll give the film credit for having a real villain even if it felt like he was jobbing the entire time. This guy has telekinesis and a fairly strong amount of regeneration. Beyond that he mostly has human specs and ends up losing virtually every fight that he’s in. The guy has to rely on his tenacity to get the final victories in the end.

So things tend to go his way but he’s not going to be one of the more impressive villains that you see. I thought he was decent enough though and does end up being fairly memorable. He also allowed the film to have a quick fight scene at the end. On a logistic level I don’t see why he really needed the crew though. Seems to me that he would have had tons of options in order to secure his objective. The guy has super powers and regeneration, that leads to a whole lot of options. Then once he had the crew on board, he probably could have just strong armed them into helping instead of putting on an act where he couldn’t help but laugh at different times.

I’ll also say that the main crew were actually fairly smart here. In most of these films they all get extremely greedy and want to get every piece of money available. In this case once the main characters find the gold, they all decide to leave. They have enough money to live comfortably so why get greedy and take the ship too right? The reason their plan fails is due to circumstances outside of their control. They still outpace most main characters when it comes to decision making in a horror title. These salvagers are supposed to be professionals after all so that makes sense.

Now that doesn’t make them perfect by any means. One guy decides to cheat on his fiancé which leads to him falling for the most obvious trick possible. Generally the others at least had some good excuses as to how they were murdered but this guy had no such excuse. I would also blame the spirits for a lot of this. The film explains their plans in the movie and why they are picking on the main characters but there is one who wants to help. She goes about it in the most roundabout way possible though and talks very cryptically. We know that the main spirit will try silencing her so at that point it’s probably a good idea to just quickly blurt everything out.

I also thought the soundtrack was mainly good. The rock song during the boat massacre was a little weak as it felt like some kind of emo blend of rock but the more traditional rock songs sprinkles throughout the film were fairly solid. Unlike most horror titles I can at least say it had these things going for it. The film just can’t avoid the classic horror pitfalls at the same time. Even aside from the violence we also have the gross maggots scene. I think for some grossness can be interchanged with scariness which is why horror films tend to go for gross visuals as well but it doesn’t do the movie any favors.

As far as the final horror twist goes, I thought it was fairly effective. Horror films essentially have to have a twist ending. It’s the closest thing to a mandate that you will find in a movie. It may not have been enough to save the film but this one was at least trying. If it could just tone down the violence then the film would immediately be in a much better place.

Overall, Ghost Ship was not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination but it certainly took some better swings than most. The film at least had potential which is more than I can say for most. The characters were mostly smart throughout the movie and the soundtrack was good. I would still recommend watching something like Scooby Doo: Zombie Island over this one of course. In the end this is just a reminder on why you don’t want to sail into the middle of the ocean without telling anyone where you are going.

Overall 2/10