Wuchak
I was surprised how good "Ghost Voyage" (2008) is. The plot concerns a group of nine people, mostly strangers, who suddenly awaken on a mysterious ship in the middle of the ocean. An enigmatic Asian steward appears and instructs them to follow the rules. Some do, and some don't, to their own peril.Although quite a bit of the CGI is questionable and the plot is predictable from the get-go (think "Carnival of Souls" or "Purgatory"), the emphasis on character wins the day.At about 90 minutes the film moves right along, maintaining your attention, with a nice increase of suspense toward the end.Shot in Bulgaria, the film features a nice smörgåsbord of worthy European females, starting with the girl-next-door brunette protagonist, played by Deanna Russo, followed by the blond ghost seductress, played by Jasmina Toshkova.The possibility of redemption for those who have ears to hear is hinted at early on and, believe it or not, the culmination of this aspect brought tears to my eyes. Excellent! GRADE: B+
julian kennedy
Ghost Voyage: 5 out of 10: This is a SyFy Channel movie so I am grading on a curve here. Ghost voyage starts of a bit slow but quickly builds to a surprisingly suspenseful ending.The movies plot is a little like the superior Ghost Ship. A bunch of strangers wakes up on an abandoned cargo ship with no idea where they are. A creepy and ghostly Steward gives them the rules and then fades into the background. Like some aquatic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the guests break the rules and meet various fates.Ghost Voyage overall is straightforward with okay CGI and limited gore. Director James Oxford however squeezes some decent performances and a surprising amount of tension out of the otherwise by the numbers script.The movies other strength is its eye-candy. For the ladies there is a former Calvin Klein Model (Antonio Sabato Jr.) for the gentlemen there is a troika of beauties.Lead actress Deanna Russo and ghost girl Zhasmina Toskova certainly entertain enough but my money is on Julian Berlin as the blond, husband stealing flapper. Despite a lack of nudity the ladies certainly help hold a viewers interest during a slow first half.Overall Ghost Voyage gets better as it moves along, and is entertaining enough diversion for those interested in the genre.
sartr-1
"You don't have a clue what's going on here, do you?" our heroine is heard to ask at one point during this floating "Sci Fi Original" slapped-together crap of a movie. A better question is, who cares? Nine strangers wake up aboard a colossal cargo ship in stormy seas finding no one else aboard but an Asian steward who prepares them for their strange voyage with a list of ship "rules". Naturally, we soon see the price of transgression as each thinly-drawn passenger in their own own way steps over the line and is stalked by seemingly random ghosties (all without being properly introduced). By the time the purpose of all this familiar and predictable spectral terror has been revealed the viewer should be struggling mightily not to start surfing from this aquatic embarrassment to another channel.The eerie interiors are the best part of this movie for me, though a lot of them look more like they belong to a submarine than a cargo ship. The plot is as old as seafaring history and the dialog could have been written in an internet chat room. The characters aren't clearly motivated for a second and every other actor is saddled with an atrocious accent for no apparent reason. The performances range from listless to laughable but that's hardly worth mentioning since these actors have clearly been punished enough by having to read those horrifically infantile lines.A few trolls might take some amusement from the sheer amateur ineptitude of this movie but I can't honestly recommend it to horror enthusiasts or even horror-at-sea completests. DIVE DIVE DIVE!
lost-in-limbo
Another boringly humdrum straight-to-TV horror enterprise that sinks real fast in its uninteresting, rancid story. Three times it took me to eventually get through it. I simply had trouble staying awake. From the get-go everything about it is shallow (superficial characters and abysmal dialogues) with every cliché from the handbook being unashamedly used in a sleep-inducing manner. The material is lame, as there's little in the way of mystery (not much really going on) and the twist is predictably weak. It's like a rejected idea of a 'Twilight Zone' episode. The further along the mechanical story goes and eventually unfolds (remember to follow the rules and there's always a chance to re-correct your past mistakes in some other form
blah, blah) reveals how unintentionally humorous, inconsistent and mind-numbing it is. Talk about an aggravatingly languid boat trip experience. Special effects are dodgy with many clunky moments, but nothing extremely terrible and quite the usual low-budget standard you see in these presentations. So the shocks, well the supposed attempts were completely off and incredibly dull. So were the death scenes. Direction is drab, while the pacing drags and the setting never convinces. Performances are bottom of the barrel. Quite bland, forgettable and disposable. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa appears in a nothing role. Antonio Sabato Jr. makes for a lacking lead performance, so does his opposite the lovely, but empty Deanna Russo. In all, just crumby.
AD
