Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
66
Bandslam
45
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
29
Collector, The
23
Couples Retreat
80
District 9
61
Extract
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
60
Funny People
32
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
27
Gamer
41
G-Force
39
Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, The
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
55
I Can Do Bad All By Myself
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
33
Love Happens
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
51
My Sister's Keeper
42
Orphan
28
Pandorum
63
Perfect Getaway, A
86
Ponyo![]()
35
Post Grad
48
Proposal, The
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
24
Sorority Row
83
Star Trek![]()
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
55
Taking Woodstock
47
Time Traveler's Wife
96
Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D![]()
35
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
28
Ugly Truth, The
88
Up![]()
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum![]()
56
Adam
72
Adela
39
Adventures of Power
78
Afghan Star
61
After the Storm
66
Afterschool
xx
All the Best
58
American Casino
72
Amreeka
48
Antichrist
73
Araya
62
Art & Copy
55
As Seen Through These Eyes
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The![]()
13
Beautiful Life, A
70
Beeswax
35
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71
Big Fan
66
Black Dynamite
51
Blind Date
xx
Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76
Bliss
35
Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57
Boys Are Back, The
45
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star![]()
70
Bronson
45
Burning Plain, The
xx
Carriers
55
Casi Divas
57
Chelsea on the Rocks
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
59
Collapse
44
Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82
Cove, The![]()
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The![]()
67
Departures
xx
Dil Bole Hadippa
71
Disgrace
xx
Do Knot Disturb
70
Earth Days
24
Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85
Education, An![]()
55
Endgame
xx
Eulogy for a Vampire
xx
Everyone Else
xx
Fatal Promises
56
Fifty Dead Men Walking
62
Five Minutes of Heaven
74
Flame & Citron
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
28
Free Style
xx
From Mexico with Love
50
Fuel
25
Gentlemen Broncos
50
Give Me Your Hand
58
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo![]()
52
Grace
64
Harmony and Me
81
Headless Woman, The![]()
xx
Heretics, The
63
Horse Boy, The
73
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
74
Humpday
94
Hurt Locker, The![]()
29
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16
If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75
In Search of Beethoven
83
In the Loop![]()
61
Intimate Enemies
42
Irene in Time
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
19
Labor Day
xx
Laila's Birthday
41
Little Ashes
41
Little Traitor, The
66
Liverpool
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
83
Maid, The![]()
xx
Ministers, The
59
More Than a Game
67
Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
xx
Mystery Team
48
New York, I Love You
73
Night and Day
66
No Impact Man
47
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34
Other Man, The
xx
Painter Sam Francis, The
54
Paper Heart
xx
Paradise
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
44
Peter and Vandy
35
Play the Game
77
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx
Pretty Ugly People
65
Providence Effect, The
76
Rembrandt's J'accuse
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
40
Shrink
61
Skin
77
Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx
Skiptracers
46
Splinterheads
39
St. Trinian's
89
Still Walking![]()
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
55
Storm
65
Tetro
70
That Evening Sun
72
Thirst
xx
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61
Trucker
xx
Turning Green
83
U2 3D![]()
66
Unmade Beds
66
Unmistaken Child
70
Visual Acoustics
55
Walt & El Grupo
67
Way We Get By, The
69
We Live in Public
64
Wedding Song, The
64
Where is Where?
xx
White on Rice
74
Woman in Berlin, A
69
World's Greatest Dad
70
Yes Men Fix the World
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx
You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Ghost Ship

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 25 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 48 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Mark Hanlon (also story)
John Pogue
Directed by: Steve Beck
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 25, 2002
DVD: March 28, 2003
Running Time: 85 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Australia
Summary
RATING: R for strong violence/gore, language and sexuality
Starring Julianna Margulies, Gabriel Byrne, Ron Eldard, Isaiah Washington, Desmond Harrington, Alex Dimitriades, Karl Urban, and Emily Browning
In a remote region of the Bering Sea, a salvage crew discovers the eerie remains of a grand passenger liner lost for more than 40 years. Once onboard, the crew must uncover the truth about the ship's past and unlock the mystery that threatens their very survival. (Warner Bros.)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Washington Post Richard Harrington
The plot doesn't always make sense, despite a thunderous explicatory montage halfway through, but as a fresh setting for terror shenanigans.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Beck wants to dazzle the audience. I'd settle for a story.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Loren King
An adequate horror movie for the Halloween season, but it too easily sinks into haunted-house-film conventions, even if the haunted house is decked out as an Italian luxury liner.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Staff (Not credited)
That creaking noise you hear in Ghost Ship is the rattling of countless plot skeletons that have sunk before.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
About as frightening as Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
Not scary enough for its own good, Beck's Ghost Ship ends up stuck, enjoyably enough, between the Scylla of schlock and the Charybdis of camp.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
If you take your ghost stories garnished with a dressing of sadism, sanctimony and silliness, go ahead and squander the nine bucks.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Is the film worth seeing? Depends. It breaks no new ground as horror movies go, but it does introduce an intriguing location, and it's well made technically. It's better than you expect but not as good as you hope.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Although there are several truly jolting scares, there's also an abundance of hackneyed dialogue and more silly satanic business than you can shake a severed limb at.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Pureed, predictable conflation of ''Alien'' and ''Titanic'' and ''The Shining.''
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Pretty much what you'd expect -- just another haunted house that happens to float.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Ghost Ship, which can best be described by altering one consonant in the second word, sustains the stylishness of its opening for exactly three minutes.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
So preoccupied with delivering its effects that it doesn't bother to make sense of its story.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Launched with a few surprising touches and a disturbingly bloody prelude, horror pic collapses under the weight of its own dull conception and weak direction, dialogue and character portraits.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The movie is simultaneously soft and icky; the gross-out effects are grafted onto a sub-"Tales from the Crypt" ghost story that never scares up any serious chills.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Likely to appeal only to undiscriminating nudity-- and gore -- starved adolescents.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer
Stupid, derivative horror film that substitutes extreme gore for suspense.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
A big, incoherent bore, interesting only as an example of assembly-line movie-making gone awry.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Ghost Ship would have been so much better if they'd just let the ship do more of the acting.
Miami Herald Chris Hewitt
Coincidentally, this is the second movie in two weeks about a haunted seafaring vessel ("Below" is the other), and if you see just one, this shouldn't be it.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
A better name for it would have been the Herschell Gordon Lewis: the godfather of gore himself couldn't have topped this succession of grisly deaths.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Meandering, sub-aquatic mess: It's so bad it's good, but only if you slide in on a freebie.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Mark Holcomb
Despite a couple of inventive CGI effects (one involving mass evisceration), the results are more predictable and less frightening than a Con Ed bill in mid August.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
See evil. See evil run. Run, evil, run all the way to cable television purgatory.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.8 (out of 10) based on 48 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Ken W. gave it a7:
Not bad at all. I enjoyed watching it.
Sam gave it a0:
A movie so bad, so horribly wretched that it reminds that suicide exists.
Kara M gave it a 3:
Ummm the first scene is okay i guess, i must say im a big fan of ghost stories and i get squeemish at gorey scenes, this was BORING and i didnt get grossed out at all, just looked so fake! they looked like they wrote the script in like 20 minutes, TAKE YOUR TIME! as i said.... BORRRRRING!
Pat C. gave it a 3:
Declares in the first 5 minutes that it will be a dumb-ass horror flick waste of time. And it delivers. Aims low, very, very low, and hits the mark. Pointless but watchable.
Sunny S. gave it a 0:
Horror films do not usually climax at the beggining but this one does and it is not a good thing. One can be tricked into a false sense of expectation after seeing the blood and gore at the beggining (which was quite good but doesn't redeem this film) but this will be the films undoing as it fails to produce any more scares. However the visuals are quite good when there are any. Also the story line is rather rubbish to politely put it and one couldn't really care for any of the characters. For those seeking a good scare I'd advice to avoid this and go watch "Dawn Of The Dead" or some of your old Elmstreet videos.
Saer A. gave it a 2:
This is one of the worst movies of all time. Why did they even bother making this film?
Shelby A. gave it an 8:
Okay, 1st of all, let me comment on the acting: It was pretty good. Emily Browning did awesome and is now my new fav. actress! Desmond Harrington, don't get me wrong is a sufficiently good actor and a knock out, but his part just wasn't right for him. Finally, Epps, she was aweful! Julianna Margulies, stick to ER. Or, just don't try acting tougher than you are, for your sake! 2ndly, the writing was just a little rushed. Take for instance, the scene in Katie's room. Great, great, kind of spooky, but then they just rushed to quickly into Katie explaining what had happened. And whatever it was that had scared her, well, if it were my movie, being that she's on a ship that will eventually take her to Hell, I would have made images of how terrible it would be for her, if she continues to talk, appear on her walls. So, it just went a little quickly, is all. 3rdly, the movie itself was, all in all, a good film, great, even. But, I felt that the trailers made it look a lot more tragic, and that would have been a lot cooler. Fourthly, I had 3 favourite scenes. 1)The beginning, of course. 2)The scene where Katie is dancing by the pool. This scene was great! It showed the tragicness of what had happened. It was also kindof spooky, a little girl, full of nostalgia and sadness, dancing by the poolside. 3)The very end. That part was fabolous! This scene, I felt, explained it all. It had everything I was looking for in the film. It showed how terrible and bittersweet it was that, even though they are now free, they never wanted to die in the first place. It showed how horrible the curse really was. The part when Katie smile as she disappeared, showed the sweetness that they are finally free. Going from Epps feeling overwhelmed, the audience just about to loose all hope, and Katie thinking she will never get off, to a beautiful and amazing array of ascending souls! Finally, I rate this film an 8, because as great as it was, it could have been written slightly better abnd the whole film made a little more spooky and tragic.
