Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

a_chinn Long on visual effects and style, short on plot and characters, this big budget horror film doesn't offer much outside of solid cast and some cleverly gory moments. I loved the 1950s style opening sequence to the film, with Julianna Margulies torch singing on an elegant passenger ship at sea. This scene climaxes with the film's most outrageous and memorable death scene, where an entire dance floor is cut in half when a steel cable snaps loose. If the film had maintained that level of over-the-top shock value, this film might have been better. Instead, like the the first "Blade" film with it's amazing bloodbath opening sequence, the rest of the film is a major letdown. "Ghost Ship" was directed by Steve Beck, who's only other directing credit is "13 Ghosts," which was similarly short of plot, but strong on visual effect and style, although this film's writer is John Pogue, who wrote the underrated "U.S. Marshals" and the also underrated "Quarantine 2: Terminal," but this script about a salvage crew (Gabriel Byrne, Ron Eldard, Isaiah Washington, Karl Urban, and Emily Browning) finding and setting out to loot the titular ghost ship killed off one-by-one in rather unmemorable fashions and amongst a lots of cheap jump-scares. It's kind of fun seeing Julianna Margulies pre-The Good Wife in such a disreputable of genre film, but that's not enough to save this dull horror flick. Horror fans should watch the first 10 minutes of this film, but then turn it off.

paulg-67221 Credit where credit is due. The concept of this film: a salvage crew are hired to recover a 40 year old lost Italian cruise ship that mysteriously disappeared. Had this this film been a psychological horror, it would have been better.Unfortunately, this film has been made like a typical horror with clichéd characters, bad acting and poor dialogue. The main actor Julianna Margulies even admitted later on she agreed to be in this movie because of the original script and was disappointed when she arrived she was going to act out a completely different script. This does not surprise me, there are some elements of good. One example is Gabriel Byrne's character is a recovering alcoholic. We are told that he doesn't drink in a bar scene early on and he stops himself from drinking whiskey (I think it was whiskey anyway) on board the ship only to drink some after the loss of a crew member. It's a shame that this was not developed as it would have given the character depth.Another good element was the relationship between Murphy (Gabriel Byrnes) and Epps (Julianna Margulies). This too is very undeveloped. The relationship between the characters were undeveloped at the cost of trying to make this film more popular. A terrible shame as this would have let the audience develop a bond with the characters rather than a typical horror where there is usually a game of seeing who's next to be slaughtered.As for the supernatural elements, the villain's main goal is to collect souls, so why couldn't he have killed them off a lot sooner? A psychological horror would have made this film a lot more interesting and believable. At most the supernatural should have been implied. Having all "supernatural" encounters have a rational (i.e. hallucination) or supernatural explanation leaving the audience to decide for themselves is also preferable. Overall, I would only recommend this film in the sense that it's interesting from speculation perspective.

Python Hyena Ghost Ship (2002): Dir: Steve Beck / Cast: Julianna Margulies, Gabriel Byrne, Isaiah Washington, Ron Eldard, Emily Browning: There is something truly corrupt about a film that relies on blood and a body count to sell. Ghost Ship is about the same level of stupidity as 13 Ghosts. They are both graphic and violent plus they contain the stupidest people on the planet. Plot regards a group called salvagers although we can call them morons, idiots, nitwits, fruitcakes, whatever you wish. They discover a ship deemed lost but deemed found for this embarrassing peep show. Then the crew die in graphic methods that leave viewers yawning. Steve Beck handles the action more effectively than he did with that other embarrassment 13 Ghosts. The wasted cast include Julianna Margulies, Gabriel Byrne, Isaiah Washington, and Ron Eldard. Margulies believes that she sees a girl on board the ship. We even have an early appearance by Emily Browning who will go on to far greater things. That could be a strong indication that she had too much to drink before the shoot. They spend much time running and timing that perfect opportunity to have their guts splattered all over the wall like a bad interior decorator's job. It is a visual feast about past evil that lie in wait but the only thing audiences are waiting for is the credit roll so that they can get off this ship and forget it ever existed. Score: 2 / 10

OllieSuave-007 This ghost movie begins with the brutal and sudden death for passengers of an ocean-liner, a gripping scene that starts the movie off with much intrigue. It then leads to the present day where a salvage crew discovers the long-lost ship in a remote region of the Bering Sea. As they begin to tow it back to land, paranormal events soon happen to them.The story's plot has some creepy and hair-raising moments you've come to expect from ghost/horror movies, and the story takes a turn when the apparition of the young girl reveals herself to the salvage crew and foretells the dark and brutal history of the passengers and crew of the ship. It then all leads to a race for survival for the salvage crew.I thought, though, that the movie's latter half is just a lot of running around and people trying to survive ***spoiler ahead*** the main, evil ghost named Ferriman (Desmond Harrington), who uses gold on the ship as bait to get the crew and passengers, from the beginning of the movie, to turn on each other, resulting in their untimely deaths. This deviates from any surprises or plots twists in the film, all leading to a pretty predictable outcome. However, I thought the ending scene was confusing and leaves a cliffhanger.Overall, it's an action-packed movie with OK acting, but with limited suspense towards the latter half of the movie.Grade C