I remember seeing the trailer for this film and immediately knowing how shitty it was going to be. Julianna Margulies going for a theatrical career? Gabriel Byrne not playing a psychopath? Ron Eldard…who the fuck is Ron Eldard? There was something redeeming about this movie, that I kept being told about: the first five minutes. I have seen the first five minutes quite a few times, mostly on HBO or Starz or whatever, but I can never make it through more than that. While browsing Netflix Instant Watch, we saw this, and I asked Rampaige if she had seen the first five minutes, which she had not. After that, we were both too lazy to shut it off, so I ended up seeing what I had been missing all these years. In short…not much.

I don’t know if I feel worse for this guy, or anyone who watches this movie.

So I’ve talked about it enough. What happens in the first five minutes? Well, there’s a cruise ship in the 60’s with a bunch of dressed up people dancing around. We see a cable being pulled taut by a wench, getting faster and faster. It is snagged on a few poles, causes the motor to smoke, and when the tension is too much, and the cable slices across the entire dance floor. The characters stand there momentarily, seemingly confused, until we finally see the top halves of these people slide off. There ends up being nearly a hundred people chopped in half, all over the floor, all cut in half. Then, the nu-metal kicks in, and thus starts the “present day” portion of this shitfest.

Watch out! Behind you! It’s that bitch from Lemony Snicket’s!

The movie follows a group of people who salvage boats and sell them for scrap. Some guy comes out of nowhere, claiming to know where the “ghost ship”, if you will, can be found. This obviously means a big pay-day for the gang. Yay! So they end up getting onto the ghost boat and, surprisingly, weird stuff starts happening! The discovery of gold, hallucinations involving former crew members of the boat, and some lady in a red dress who tries to get a guy to sleep with her. Sadly, for him, she was just tricking him into falling down an elevator shaft. Seriously dude, oldest trick in the book. Try to grab boobs, fall down an elevator shaft. We find out that the character who knew informed the salvagers of the location of the boat was acting similarly to Charon from Greek mythology, whose job it was to provide souls to hell. He ran the boat, collecting souls, doing this over and over again. Julianna Margulies is the only survivor when she blows the boat up, but when being loaded onto the ambulance, she sees the Charon character getting onto a different boat. NOOOOO!!!! Then more nu-metal starts playing! FUCK YES!

Take my word for it, this is the woman in red, despite not wearing clothes at the moment.

I don’t know if I could narrow it down to what the worst part of the movie was, because it was basically the entire middle. And by middle, I mean everything other than the first five minutes, and maybe the last five minutes. It’s not so much the idea of the movie was dumb, because once you realize what’s going on at the end, it’s actually kind of interesting. BUT THIS IS SUCH A GODDAMNED INEFFICIENT OF COLLECTING SOULS! He only killed seven or eight people, and he had to use a giant fucking boat. THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO KILL PEOPLE WITHOUT USING A GIANT BOAT. sure, the beginning part of the movie, there were a few hundred, which is nothing to scoff at. Can’t you find a slightly easier way to kill several people? I could come up with at least 23 ways to achieve that, which doesn’t involve a giant cruise ship. However, if questioned by authorities, I will deny everything.

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