neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Ghost Ship
	Steve Beck Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Margulies, Ron Eldard, Isaiah Washington, Desmond Harrington, Alex Dimitriades, Karl Urban 2002		"The Shining" on a boat? "13 Ghosts" at sea? "Titanic" with spooks? Not hardly, not exactly and not even close. "Ghost Ship" is a labored, ocean-going haunted-house movie with an okay crew of actors, among them Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Margulies, Ron Eldard and Isaiah Washington, reduced to slumming in a mediocre genre picture for the bucks. The introduction, wherein fiendish doings on a fancy Italian cruise ship in the early '50s are shown in gory detail, is promising. But the bulk of the muddled tale is set in the present day, after the ace salvage crew of the tug Arctic Warrior is told of an abandoned vessel of great worth that drifts off the coast of Alaska. Hungry for the riches that await anyone who claims the ship and drags it back to shore, the men and woman of the Arctic Warrior (Byrne, Margulies, etc.) head out to sea — and certain doom!!! The ship is cursed, and anyone who boards it faces dark forces, not to mention well-bred lost souls and a cute li'l ghost girl. There are some slick, intriguing computer graphics, and some soggy ones. And "Ghost Ship" sinks swiftly.