New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

Ghost Ship
Warner Bros.

6.8 based on 25 reviews Read critic reviews How did we calculate this? based on 47 votes Read user comments Rate this movie

• Internet Movie Database
• View The Trailer
• Official Studio Site

MPAA 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.)

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Mark Hanlon (also story) John Pogue
DIRECTED BY:	Steve Beck
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 28, 2003  Video: March 28, 2003  Theatrical: October 25, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	85 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Australia

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...

60

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.

50

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Beck wants to dazzle the audience. I'd settle for a story.

50

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.

50

Entertainment Weekly Staff (Not credited)

That creaking noise you hear in Ghost Ship is the rattling of countless plot skeletons that have sunk before.

50

ReelViews James Berardinelli

About as frightening as Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion.

50

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.

50

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.

50

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.

38

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.

38

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Pureed, predictable conflation of ''Alien'' and ''Titanic'' and ''The Shining.''

38

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Pretty much what you'd expect -- just another haunted house that happens to float.

38

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.

30

The New York Times Stephen Holden

So preoccupied with delivering its effects that it doesn't bother to make sense of its story.

30

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Doesn't orchestrate the scares with much finesse.

30

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.

30

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.

30

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Likely to appeal only to undiscriminating nudity-- and gore -- starved adolescents.

25

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Stupid, derivative horror film that substitutes extreme gore for suspense.

25

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

A big, incoherent bore, interesting only as an example of assembly-line movie-making gone awry.

25

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Ghost Ship would have been so much better if they'd just let the ship do more of the acting.

25

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.

20

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.

20

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Meandering, sub-aquatic mess: It's so bad it's good, but only if you slide in on a freebie.

20

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.

10

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

See evil. See evil run. Run, evil, run all the way to cable television purgatory.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.8 (out of 10) based on 47 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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.

Ally L. gave it a 10:
This is the best f...king movie ever! i dont know why people would say its bad. f... them.

Lauz gave it a 6:
I am only 14 and definatley not a fan of scary films. In most horror films i'm lucky if I watch 20 minutes of it. The rest is spent hidden behind a cushion. I must admit the first scene was disgusting good/funny. I can't believe I watched it but I did and I thought it was quite good!

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums