Ghost Voyage

Underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr. stars as one of a group of disoriented stereotypes...er....passengers who awaken aboard a strange cargo ship in the middle of the ocean with no recollection of how they got there or where the ship is heading. Gosh, who is that strange Asian steward quoting strange rules to them? Where are they going? Where could the rest of the crew be? Why do they keep disappearing one by one? Odd advertising for this one, though. It indicates that 7 people awaken on the ship, when there are actually 9 (at the start, anyway). A few good scares, but the ending is telegraphed a mile away. Not the worst of the Sci-Fi Channel movies of the week, but certainly not the best.

This is not the worst I've seen from SyFy, but it was a movie that was sorely lacking in my view. Its redeeming values are some good ideas, some nice eerie interiors(if never really convincing authenticity-wise) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa trying his best with a character that is really beneath him. However, the special effects while not horrible are clunky at best, while Antonio Sabbato and Deanna Russo are bland in the leads, the story is sluggish and predictable with a twist that manages to fare even worse and next to no thrills or memorable death scenes, the characters are never engaging and are very stereotypical, the direction is dreary and the script never feels as though it is flowing naturally, all feeling clichéd and stilted with nothing much surprising. Overall, had some good ideas but as said already, the sluggish story, hackneyed script, bland acting and the whole forgettable feel of the movie stop it from being anything more than that, and at the end of the day it just doesn't come together. 3/10 Bethany Cox

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.

"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!

When was the last time a decent movie came out of Sci-Fi Pictures? I honestly can't recall even a mediocre one. This one continues their unbroken chain. I will admit that it gets to an intriguing start, placing the characters in a mysterious situation they can't figure out. The sets are also passable for what must have been a low budget.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take long before the movie starts to collapse. The movie beings with a brisk pace, but it doesn't take long to slow down, enough that the movie is progressing at an agonizingly slow crawl. Also, the characters are poorly developed. They are dull, and don't seem scared or confused that much by the situation that they are finding themselves in. And they are pretty interchangeable in their actions - not one character stands out.

Oh, and the CGI is horrible as well, though you probably guessed that when I announced this was a Sci-Fi Pictures movie.