'Below' is an ever-changing chiller

Below (2002)
Starring: Bruce Greenwood, Holt McCallany, Olivia Williams, Matt Davis, Nick Chinlund, and Andrew Howard
Director: David Twohy
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

While on a patrol in the Atlantic during WW2, an American submarine picks up survivors of a strange attack on a medical ship. As they attempt to reach port, the boat comes under attack from a persistent German submarine hunter while seemingly supernatural events start to hinder their efforts to survive.

With "Below", David Twohy does for the war movie what he did for sci-fi with Pitch Black. What starts in the vein of a war drama, soon shifts to an apparent espionage thriller... and eventually morphs into a full-on horror film with the crew of the submarine fighting against a monster outside (the German ship trying its best to send them to the bottom of the sea permanently) and a vengeful ghost within (both an actual supernatural ghost and the guilt harbored by some of the ship's officers surrounding the events that placed Lt. Commander Brice (Greenwood) in the position of acting captain.

With exceptional performances by the entire cast, a clever script that keeps viewers guessing about what is happening and what will come next up to, quite literally, the film's final scene, and excellent special effects, I am left wondering why this film was dumped unceremoniously directly onto the DVD market and quickly relegated to DVD multi-packs. It's a film far more deserving of the obscurity and company it's been relegated to.

If you like war movies and horror movies, "Below" is a film you need to check out.

'Ghost Ship' should be set adrift at sea

Ghost Ship (2002)
Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Margulies, and Desmond Harrington
Director: Steve Beck
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A veteran salvage-tug crew is tempted by the promise of great riches when a weather service pilot (Harrington) gives them a lead on a passenger liner adrift in international waters. Once they reach the ship, they find that it is not totally abandoned: An evil presence lurks aboard, and it wants to add the newcomers to its compliment of ghostly crew and passengers.

Take every element you typically find be in a haunted house movie, change the setting to a decaying cruise ship, bring in actors who looooove to overact, add large amounts of gore, and you have "Ghost Ship". The only additional about the movie not listed above is the lazily written script, which is a prime example of one of those stories that will grind to a complete halt if just ONE character would behave intelligently.

The most creepy and disturbing part of the film are the first few minutes. Just about everything else past that opening scene of horror and brutal mass-murder is a downhill slide, with an occasional bump.

(Interestingly, the lower-budget, direct-to-DVD haunted ship movie "Lost Voyage" is actually a little bit scarier at points and it has better acting overall. It's almost as rotten as "Ghost Ship", though, but not quite.)

'Lost Voyage' should stay lost

Lost Voyage (2001)
Starring: Judd Nelson, Janet Gunn, Scarlett Chorvat, and Lance Henrickson
Director: Christian McIntire
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

In "Lost Voyage", a cruise ship that mysteriously dissapeared in the Bermuda Triangle over 25 years ago just as mysteriously reappears in perfect condition, but seemingly completely devoid of life.


Television tabloid reporter Dana Elway (Gunn) convinces paranormal investigator Aaron Roberts (Nelson) to join her and a camera crew on a salvage expedition headed by the sinister David Shaw (Henrickson). Everyone on the expedition has hidden agendas and dark secrets, but whatever caused the ship to both vanish and reappear is still onboard, and that mysterious presence starts to exploit these secrets, destroying the expedition members one by one.

"Lost Voyage" follows the pattern of countless haunted house movies, adding no twist other than placing the action onboard an abandoned cruise ship. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad movie, just average. There are other factors that insure its low rating.

While the actors turn in fairly decent performances (Gunn and her sharkish, slutty assistant that is after her job, Scarlet Chorvat, are particularly good), but they are hampered by a script that is so full of characters doing stupid things because the plot would fall apart if they didn't that is was impossible to keep count. This is either the laziest haunted house script produced since the turn of the century, or it was actually a tale of people so dumb they deserved to die just to preserve the integrity of the human genepool.

An even greater flaw in the film is the digital effects. The film takes place aboard a ship adrift in a storm. The characters are delivered to it by a cargo helicopter. The ship, the waves, and particularly the helicopter are so badly done that one finds oneself longing for the days when models would have been used for those shots. Even the cheapest B-movies with their planes dangling oddly on wires looked more real that the computer animated helicopter in "Lost Voyage." The obvious fakeness of the establishing shots of the ship, and just about any other digital effect in the movie, drag it down something fierce. (Although, while harping on the digital effects, I have to congratulate the sound crew. There is a very impressive use of sound throughout, especially wind and rain effects. The lighting crew also does a decent job, with many scenes appearing to be lit realistically with ambient lighting. These exceptional technical aspects don't make up for the film's other problems, however.

Despite some nice (if pedestrian) chills, I think even the biggest fans of haunted house movies will walk away dissapointed from this one. It's better if "Lost Voyage" stays missing.