Ghost Voyage

A group of diverse people are jarred awake on a rusty old cargo ship floating around in the middle of some unknown ocean. Where are they? What's going on? Soon they get a visit from the dulcet tones of the ship's Steward, as played with intense boredom by the universally awesome Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who gives these losers the 'Ghost Voyage' version of the Gremlin Rules, these being 'don't open closed doors', 'don't go in the captains quarters', and don't refuse any orders given to you by the crew'. As far as we could tell this Steward is the only crew member so he could've just said 'do whatever I say' but I guess that would make him sound like a jerk. The movie is called 'Ghost Voyage', it's a Sci-Fi Channel original, and it's kind of lame.

assuming it was trying to hide it, but the only people who haven't figured this out are the people on the ship who are going about doing the same stupid stuff they were doing when they died. To their defense, the Steward could've mentioned that they should probably change their ways while delivering his Gremlin Rules, but then maybe he is kind of a jerk.

One by one our passengers do stupid stuff and get messed over by ghosts and sucked down into hell. Sometimes unjustly. Take the smoking dude for instance. Yes, he broke the no-smoking rule, but he really didn't get the chance to redeem himself before being dragged down into hell, unlike the mafia twins who had all kinds of opportunities to do right before eventually getting the hell hook. And is smoking a cigarette really a crime punishable by an eternity in hell? For that matter is cheating on your wife with an impossibly hot woman really all that bad? Okay, maybe it is, but she was pretty darned toasty. I think some wiggle room should be allowed there.

The question is what did our two attractive leads do to get banished to the death ship to hell? Truth be told… not much. If not wanting to burn to death in a flaming car or putting your old man on hold are eternal damnation events, then we are all in trouble. Even as I type this I got my old man on hold and now I know I'm going to burn in hell for this. That sucks.

For Ghost Voyage we're going to have to levy our Sci-Fi Channel Curve pretty heavily on this one because it is really, truly, not a good movie, being a collection of shaky acting, incoherent storylines and extremely suspect special effects, but when we take a step back, observe the damn thing once again and then liberally apply the curve to the events… well… it comes out smelling better than your average Sci-Fi Channel original.

You see while none of our actors were able to translate their roles into real characters, the caricatures they were playing were very funny. Nicholas Irons horrible Russian accent was awesome and automatically let us know he was the bad guy. One of the Mafioso twins actually said the word 'Joisey'. The schlock Hollywood producer made a movie called 'Jaws vs. Orca' and the caricatures in this movie actually had the nerve to mock on this mythical movie. The absolute nerve. Let's not forget The Stewards third rule, always do what I say, which he only used one time when he told the smack addict not to shoot up. Seriously Steward? That's like asking a baby not to poop in its diaper. How about a little twelve step treatment before sending my man off to hell?

The Mafioso twins by themselves probably make this movie worth seeing with their Goodfellas Gear, Joisey accents which way worse than Nicholas Irons Russian accent and their great reactions to everything. Need to get to a guy behind a Marine Steel Door… bang on it futilely with a sledgehammer. That don't work? Set the metal door on fire because they are professionals at this you know. Sure, you're on the same side of the door along with the kerosene and matches, and that metal door sure looks like it sealed up real good, but I'm not a professional arsonist so what the heck do I know? Oh look… a fire monster. Thanks Mafioso twins for making it hard for NASCAR guy and Art Chick.

So if you can make it through the early first half of this movie when our characters are just walking through the ship doing absolutely nothing of interest, which won't be easy, and then hang on for the funny stuff to come, and it will come fast and furious, 'Ghost Voyage' will never become a good regular movie, but it will become a decent Sci-Fi Channel movie.