(2002)

review by:

8-02-03

Written by: Christian McIntire and Patrick Phillips Directed by: Christian McIntire Starring: Judd Nelson, Janet Gunn, Lance Henriksen

Aaron Roberts is a paranormal psychologist/investigator who lost his father and step-mother as a child when their cruise ship went missing in the Bermuda Triangle. But when the ship suddenly reappears after 25 years at sea, Aaron reluctantly accompanies a salvage crew and investigative reporter team to go to the ship and solve the mystery of its disappearance. At first glance, this no doubt sounds like a bad Ghost Ship rip-off. In fact, having watched Ghost Ship for the first time only a few days before, that's the very reason we rented it (which, by the way, Honumon and I didn't think was as bad as everyone said it was, though that may have simply been the result of extremely low expectations). To our pleasant surprise though, we were wrong--at least about the "bad" part. Make no mistake, this is definitely a Ghost Ship rip-off, at least in terms of plot structure. Cruise ship reappears after being lost at sea for several years: check. Small group of people go to investigate the ship: check. Members of the group get killed one by one by supernatural forces: check. Only few survivors by the end of the movie: check. However, rather than being a mere copycat, Lost Voyage actually manages to improve upon the formula set forth by its Dark Castle big brother, a rare feat indeed for this type of movie. Most notably, Lost Voyage is a lot scarier. Whereas Ghost Ship relies on lots of big-budget special effects for its "scares", Lost Voyage utilizes good ol' fashion suspense, along with a number of very chilling visuals, to come off as one genuinely creepy movie. Great acting and a well-composed score (very reminiscent of Mark Snow's work) really help to maintain the eerie mood throughout the film, despite the fact that the music can at times be a bit overbearing. Lost Voyage could probably best be described as an extended episode of The X-Files directed by William Malone. I must give credit to Christian McIntire for an excellent job of directing. Lots of subtle touches, like the soup cans Aaron walks by that get turned upside down, show that there was actually some thought put into this movie and that it wasn't simply cranked out quickly in order to be over with. The film noir-esque lighting, while interesting and atmospheric, seemed a bit out of place for this type of movie, at least as far as the off-ship scenes were concerned. As Honumon commented, this was literally one of the darkest movies he had ever seen. The graphics though were remarkably good for a straight-to-video release. Just goes to show that straight-to-video does not necessarily equate with no budget. On a final note, I just thought I'd mention something that recently came to my attention. As unbelievable as this may sound, Lost Voyage is actually a Sci-fi Pictures original--and it doesn't suck! If the Sci-fi Channel can finally manage to produce a good movie, perhaps there's hope yet for the ailing made-for-TV movie genre. Yeah, right. Who are we kidding?

AKA: Ghost Rip          Boat on Haunted Wave

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