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Ghost Ship (2002)

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A friend and I were recently in our local video store (boy, I sure do seem to be mentioning them a lot lately) this past Thursday night, having decided to have a nostalgic movie-and-pizza night. We checked out the director wall, and we had already pulled Dressed to Kill as a maybe before we sauntered over to the horror section, where we alighted almost immediately on Ghost Ship, which my buddy pulled out of the stacks while referencing the number of times that he had seen the film’s lenticular cover on the shelves at the Blockbusters (et al) of our youth. He assumed I had seen it and I admitted that I hadn’t, and the pact was sealed. 

The film opens on a 1960s transatlantic sea voyage aboard the Antonia Graza, U.S.-bound from Italy. It’s the night of the captain’s ball, and a lounge singer is performing. A young girl named Katie Harwood (Emily Browning) shares a dance with the captain before a metal cable snaps and tears through the entire dance floor, slicing people as it goes and sparing only Katie, owing to her short stature. Forty years later, we get a look into the lives of a ragtag team of salvagers, with Maureen Epps (Julianna Margulies) clearly taking center stage as the film’s protagonist as we see her perform a down-to-the-wire patch job on a sinking salvage job that manages to save their haul. Also part of the salvage crew are soon-to-be-married Greer (Isaiah Washington), religious mechanic Santos (Alex Dimitriades), and also Dodge and Munder (Ron Eldard and Karl Urban), who don’t even have a one-to-two-word character trait for me to cite. Their ship, the Arctic Warrior, is captained by Murphy (Gabriel Byrne), who has a parent-child relationship with Epps. While celebrating their latest haul, they are approached by a man named Ferriman (Desmond Harrington), a weather service pilot who offers them the location of an apparently derelict cruise liner, which could end up being a huge score, if they cut him in. He negotiates his way aboard for the expedition, and when they arrive at the vessel, they realize that it’s the notorious lost ship Antonia Graza, which is treated as a kind of sea legend like the Queen Mary. As the crew begins salvage preparations, Murphy insists that they not inform the Coast Guard despite maritime laws, and Epps is the first to witness something spooky aboard: the ghost of Katie Harwood. 

This is … not a very good movie, but there are things to praise about it. Never having really given the film much thought beyond picking it up at a video store twenty years ago, reading the back of the DVD, and then putting it back on the shelf, I was surprised that this had a more complex storyline than expected. One would assume that the people killed at the beginning of the film would be the ghosts haunting the ship, and that the rest of the plot would play out as yet another pale imitation of The Haunting, but on a ship. Surprisingly, this one goes the route of having more of a mystery; the resolution is very goofy, but at least it doesn’t play all of the cards in its hand by the end of the first half hour. The salvage crew finds evidence that there have been other people aboard since the ship was originally lost, as they discover a digital watch and encounter a few corpses that are too fresh to be the original crew. Not every member of the crew was at the ball, so shouldn’t someone have survived? Why is Katie’s ghost a child if she was spared from the horrible accident in the prologue? How long did she survive aboard? Other crew members beside Epps start to experience hauntings as well, with Greer finding himself being seduced by the specter of the lounge singer, but things only get further complicated when they discover crates full of gold bars in the cargo hold. 

Apparently, this began life as more of a psychological thriller, with Murphy as the lead instead of acting as (not very convincing) decoy protagonist to Epps. Instead, it became more of a supernatural slasher, with a twist that almost, but doesn’t quite work. Ferriman’s name ends up being a clue, as it turns out that he’s a kind of demonic soul reaper who specializes in damning maritime crews through appealing to their sinful instincts. The gold is cursed, so that vessels with it aboard are ultimately destroyed because of the intense greed it afflicts upon the crew(s), with it having been transferred aboard the Antonia Graza the same day that it first went missing. The accident in the prologue was intentional sabotage, and the ship has been pulling in new crews to find it, fight over it, and ultimately die while aboard so that Ferriman can add new ghosts to his hellbound coterie. This ends up becoming needlessly complicated by some half-baked additions to the lore, including that some of the souls are “marked” by Ferriman and as such are under his control, while other innocent souls are also trapped on the ship and thus able to act against him. The only ones we ever see are Katie and the ghostly captain, and his intentions are less clear, as he induces the long-sober Murphy to have a drink with him. You can see the underpinnings of a stronger narrative here in scenes like the one that the two captains—living and dead—share, which reduces a plot that was clearly meant to echo The Shining into a single sequence of resurgent alcoholism. The overly complicated haunting plot and the slapdash characterization end up making the film feel both overstuffed and incomplete, like there’s a cut of this film that’s 10 minutes longer and more coherent, but not necessarily better. 

Still, there are some campy laughs to be had here. I found myself thinking back to our podcast discussion of Wishmaster, and how the excessive, imaginative violence of that film’s opening scene overshadowed the rest of the film, as this one also put its best scene right at the beginning. The metal line cutting through the crowd at the ball isn’t a quick scene, as the film instead revels in exploring all the ways that this would be truly horrifying. A man cut completely in half at the navel first has all of the clothes from his midsection fall to a pile around his ankles, leaving him in only his underwear and formalwear from the midriff up; it would be surprisingly chic if it weren’t for his body falling apart seconds later. The captain is sliced open at the mouth, leaving him with a grisly Gaslow grin before the top half of his head slides off. It’s a remarkable bit of gore, and we watch it all happen through the eyes of Katie, which makes it all the worse. From here, however, none of the deaths are as creative, and none of the characters are sufficiently grounded for them to matter to us emotionally, either. Murphy is placed in an empty aquarium after he attacks one of the others, and Epps later finds him having drowned when the aquarium flooded. Santos is killed off early on in an engine room explosion, and Dodge is killed offscreen via methods unknown. The most comical death is Greer’s, as he justifies hooking up with the ghost of the lounge singer by saying that it’s not really cheating since she probably doesn’t really exist, right before she lures him into falling down an elevator shaft. Greer just falls right through her when attempting to cop a feel, and it’s terribly undignified. 

This is the only other film ever directed by Steve Beck following the release of his Thirteen Ghosts remake the previous year. That didn’t come as a surprise to me when looking up the production history. There are similarities between the two insofar as shallow characterization, inconsistently entertaining violence, and general preference for spectacle over insight. This is an artifact of a lost time, when a movie that could just as easily have premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel would sometimes get a theatrical release, when Dark Castle was barely putting out original content between pumping out remakes like the aforementioned Thirteen Ghosts, the 1999 House on Haunted Hill, and the Paris Hilton House of Wax in 2005. The DVD box even suggests you learn more about the movie using an AOL keyword search and half the film’s special features require you to put it in a DVD-ROM drive (good luck). Ghost Ship’s minimal swearing and nudity seem tailor-made to be chopped out so that this could air right in the middle of a Saturday afternoon block with Epoch and Bugs, the kind of movie that you can really take a nap to. Come for the holographic cover, enjoy the opening gore, and then drift off to sleep. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Loft (2015)

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Man, are we still making erotic thrillers? Is there even a place for them in this post-[insert your porn aggregator of choice] world anymore? I suppose we still are making them this decade, given that Adulterers was released in 2016, one year after today’s stinker, The Loft.

Based on a 2008 Belgian film of the same name and featuring most of the same creative crew (director Erik Van Looy and writer Bart De Pauw, who is solely credited on the original film and is one of two credited writers here), The Loft is about five men who use a single loft apartment to cheat on their wives. Vincent (Karl Urban) is an architect who retained the apartment in one of the buildings he designed for him and his buddies to have their sexcapades: possible closet case Luke (Wenworth Miller), whose wife requires constant attention due to her diabetes; Marty (Eric Stonestreet), who channels all of his pent up, frustrated heterosexual energy from having to play broad gay stereotype Cam on Modern Family for the past decade into a disgusting misogynist pig; Chris (James Marsden), a successful psychiatrist who is the most reluctant to participate in this adulterous venture; and Philip Williams (Matthias Schoenaerts), Chris’s half-brother, a cokehead whose new bride is the daughter of a wealthy magnate. One of these names is not (recognizable) like the others; Schoenaerts is apparently reprising his role of Filip Willems from the original film.

The plot kicks off when a blonde woman is found dead in the bed that the men all use for their exploits. We then flash back to Philip’s wedding day, one fateful evening that all five men and their wives got together for dinner, and the evening that the building that houses the titular loft was opened. It’s established early on that Vincent caught Philip’s wealthy and powerful father-in-law in Vegas on a date with his mistress, and he intends to use this potentially damaging information to extort the older man into giving him the architectural contract for a new riverfront luxury building. Also on this trip, he and Luke meet Sarah Deakins (Isabel Lucas), and although they both find her attractive, she sleeps with Vincent (there is a strip-down from Karl Urban here that isn’t exactly a saving grace, but it does give this largely unerotic erotic thriller a little heat). We also learn that Chris, despite his original objections, has fallen for Ann Morris (Rachael Taylor) and has been having an affair with her. Who is the dead woman handcuffed to the bed: Sarah or Ann? And who killed her, and why?

There are twists a-plenty in this film; to be fair, most of them are unforeseen and unforeseeable but do make sense when they are revealed. The problem is that this is a film that prides itself on being 20 minutes ahead of its audience, but fails to realize that it’s also 15 years behind it. Belgian screenwriter De Pauw collaborated with American Wesley Strick to adapt the film for a U.S. audience, a choice that almost makes sense. After all, Strick penned the screenplays for some hit thrillers like 1998’s Return to Paradise (71% on Rotten Tomatoes), the remake of Cape Fear (75% and two Oscar nominations), and 1989’s True Believer (95%!), as well as 1990’s well-received horror comedy Arachnophobia. Those are the highlights of his career, however; 2006’s Love Is the Drug was only reviewed by 5 critics, and 1994’s Wolf was met with a mixed reception. The rest of his filmography is not only bad, but memorably so: Final Analysis is an attempt at aping Hitchcock with a director best known for U2 videos (and got only 54% on RT); The Saint (1997, 29%) featured one of my favorite bits of cinematic nonsense ever when Elisabeth Shue’s character realizes that love cured her heart condition; The Glass House (2001, 21%) pleased no one; Doom (2005, 19%) is over a decade old and still a punchline; and the Nightmare on Elm Street remake (2010, 15%) had only Jackie Earle Haley’s performance as its only redeeming feature. Only Strick’s 1995 debut feature, The Tie That Binds, was more poorly received, with a 9% positive rating. It’s a very mixed list of credits, but the fact that all of his successes were made between 1989 and 1999 tells you a lot about where his talents lie and what kind of thriller he’s capable of drafting. You take that nineties sensibility and blend it with a Belgian idea, and you get a film that almost works but falls short in ways that are difficult to pinpoint. Not even a cast of A/B-list hunks could draw in an audience, as the film only grossed 10 million dollars to its budget of 14 million.

About the only thing that makes this one interesting is that over half the cast would go on to play or had already played characters in superhero properties, largely of the Marvel vein, or another character from genre fiction. So if you ever wanted to know what it would be like to watch Cyclops (Marsden in the X-Men films) get it on with Jessica Jones’s best friend Trish Walker (Taylor, Jessica Jones), or for Dr. McCoy/Judge Dredd/Skurge (Urban, the Abrams Star Trek movies/Dredd/Thor: Ragnarok) to seduce a woman despite the charms of Captain Cold (Miller, The Flash), then you’re a weirdo like me, congrats, and you might get a modicum of fun out of this movie. Otherwise, however, there’s no real reason to check this one out. I’m hesitant to call it “chaste,” but in comparison to other films in this genre, it leaves much to be desired in the realm of eroticism, and the various twists and turns that the narrative takes are barely worth the time it takes to get through them. Skip this one.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

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Thor: Ragnarok marks the third Marvel release of the year that focused on fun and adventure, and all for the best. After last year’s kinda-dreary Civil War and the visually arresting but narratively empty Doctor Strange, the film branch of the House of Ideas was in top form this year, churning out an equal sequel with Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and the delightful Spider-Man: Homecoming. Although Guardians 2 may have leaned a little hard on the beats with its humor (kind of like your friend who tells great jokes but is also a little desperate and always ends up laughing too hard at himself) and Homecoming was an out-and-out comedy with intermittent superheroing, Marvel brought it home with a good balance of strong character moments, spaceships flying around and pewpewing at each other, new and returning cast members with great chemistry, and a hearty helping of the magic that is Jeff Goldblum.

After visiting the fire realm ruled by Suftur (voiced by Clancy Brown), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returns to Asgard after a few years galavanting about and looking for the Infinity McGuffins, only to find Loki (Tom Hiddleston) still disguised as Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and ineffectually ruling Asgard while propping up the myth of the “dead” “hero” following Loki’s supposed sacrifice at the end of The Dark World. Thor enlists Loki in helping him seek out the real Odin on Midgard (Earth), but events conspire to release the long-imprisoned (and forgotten) Asgardian Goddess of Death, Hela (Cate Blanchett).

Her return to Asgard to take the throne leaves Thor and Loki stuck on the planet Sakaar, ruled by the Grandmaster (Goldblum), who offers the space- and time-lost denizens of the planet their proverbial bread and literal circuses in the form of massive gladatorial games. As it turns out, this is where our old buddy the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) ended up after his exit at the end of Age of Ultron, and he’s the champion of the arena after having stayed in his big green form since we last saw him on screen. Also present is Scrapper 142 (Tessa Thompson), a former Asgardian Valkyrie who likewise found herself on this bizarre planet after being defeated by Hela before her imprisonment. Meanwhile, Heimdall (Idris Elba) is hard at work putting together a resistance and biding his time until Thor and company can return to Asgard, stop Hela and her new lieutenant Skurge (Karl Urban), and prevent Ragnarok.

Despite apparently being no one’s favorite Avenger and being overshadowed in virtually every installment by inexplicable (to me) fan favorite Loki, Thor has experienced a lot of growth in the past six years since he was first embodied by Hemsworth, and so have his films. The Dark World was, in many ways, the nadir of the MCU franchise as a whole (until Doctor Strange came along), where it felt like everyone was just going through the motions after having a lot more fun with the surprisingly pleasant balance between the fish-out-of-water humor and royal family drama of the first film. I quite like Natalie Portman, personally, and I would have loved to see her continuing to have a role in these films, but she was sleepwalking through that last film with so much apathy that she made Felicity Jones look like an actress.

Here, however, everyone is totally committed to the job, which is probably easier under the guiding hand of the bombastic and colorful Taika Waititi, who seems to be the embodiment of Mr. Fun, than it was in a film helmed by Alan Taylor, whose work tends to be more grim, if not outright melancholy. This is a movie with setpiece after setpiece, all in different realms and on various planets with their own palettes and aesthetic principles, which lends the film a verisimilitude of scope, even though each conflict (other than the opening fight sequence) comes down to something much more intimate and personal: the friction between selfishness and the responsibility to something greater than oneself. The wayward Valkyrie forsakes her desire to drink herself to death while running from the past in order to defend her home once again, Bruce Banner risks being completely and permanently subsumed by the Hulk in order to lend a hand when Asgard calls for aid, Skurge finds a strength he didn’t know he had when faced with the extermination of his people, and even Loki ends up making a decision that helps others with no apparent direct or indirect benefits to himself. The oldest being in the film, Hela, has never learned this lesson despite having nearly an eternity to do so, and it is her ultimate undoing (maybe), and it’s a strong thematic element that comes across clearly in a way that a lot of films from the MCU do not.

There are some mitigating factors, as there always are. Those of you hoping for a Planet Hulk adaptation are going to be mightily disappointed, although you should definitely check out Marvel’s direct-to-video animated version, which is not only the only unequivocally good animated film Marvel produced before ceding that realm to DC, but also has a starring role for my boy Beta Ray Bill, who has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as one of the faces carved into the Grandmaster’s tower. There are also some character deaths earlier in the film that I think are supposed to be shocking in a meaningful way, but come on so suddenly and have so little effect on the plot that it feels kind of tasteless. I would have loved to see more of Sakaar’s arenas as well; it’s hard not to feel cheated when a movie promises some gladiatorial combat and ends up giving you only one match-up.

I’ll save the rest of my thoughts for our Agents of S.W.A.M.P.F.L.I.X. review, but I’ll say this for now: this is a fun summertime Thor movie that somehow ended up being released in November, but it’s nonetheless a delight. Check it out while it’s still in theaters, as you should never pass up the opportunity to see a live action depiction of that ol’ Kirby crackle on the big screen.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond