Discovering a haunted ship left stranded in the middle of the ocean sounds like a heroic dream for many, but director Steve Beck made this reality true for the movie Ghost Ship cast. The movie was released on 25th October 2002 and is a supernatural horror film.
If one compares it to the present-day movies, Ghost Ship probably will not even hold a candle to them, but it felt like a creative breakthrough for its time. The Warner Bros. production was shot in parts of Australia and Canada, and the makers did their best with prosthetics, VFX, miniatures CGI, etc., to make the film feel as real as possible.
Mark Hanlon and John Pogue wrote the film Ghost Ship, about a salvage crew who, while in an almost abandoned region at the Bering Sea, come face to face with a ship that looks like it has been in the waters for far too long.
They recognize the ship as the 1962 ship that got lost only to be found now. The crew gets on the abandoned ship, thinking that the passengers on board must have been long dead, but soon they realize something very wrong with the ship.
Ghost Ship stars actor Gabriel Byrne as Sean Murphy and Emily Browning as Katie Harwood. Juliana Margulies from the popular show ER is cast as Maureen Epps alongside Ron Eldard as Dodge. The movie has a wide set of actors playing the role of different crew members of the ship.
Even after being a completely different genre from the film Titanic, the movie was still compared to it and has been called a failing parody of the same. The Warner Bros. production house has put so much stress on getting the special effects right that they have missed out on creating a tangible story.
Ghost Ship Ending Explained
One thing that everybody who has seen the movie commends is the terrifying opening scene of the film. It is 1962, and we are aboard a passenger ship named MS Antonia Graza. Everybody is feeling joyous, and the party scene is set. We see a small girl sitting alone while everybody is busy dancing. Things are perfect when the ship’s Captain offers to take the little girl, Katie, to the dance floor.
This is where the dream-like reality breaks and somebody on the ship let lose a wire that dangles across the dance floor, which leaves people cut in half, including the ship’s Captain. Katie is saved obviously because of her small height. This particular scene felt real and horrifying back then and even now.
We skip to the present time, the year 2002, still at sea but this time on a different ship. This one has a salvaging crew on board: Sean Murphy, the Captain, Maureen Epps, Greer, Dodge, Munder, and Santos. One weather service pilot, Ferriman, approaches their ship and tells them about an abandoned ship ahead, ready for anyone to claim.
Hating the fact that they might lose all the potential assets the ship might have, the crew, after great difficulty, finds themselves on the lost ocean liner. Upon reaching, the crew realizes that it has been a long since this ship set sail while also coming across long-dead passengers. After some exploring, they find nine boxes on the ship, all filled with real gold bars.
The Horrors Begin
After some discussion, the acts of horror commenced, and the crew finalized that it would be best for them to leave Antonia Graza. But it is not so easy, as one of the ghost hauntings causes damage to their Arctic Warrior, rendering it useless.
A series of terrible events get set in motion as we see Greer being pushed down an elevator shaft; Murphy looks like he is slowly losing his sanity, which leads the crew members to lock him in a tank, where he is later found drowned. Next is Munder, who also turns up dead in an evil way.
Dodge is also confronted by the demons who push him to confess his feelings to Epps. We find Dodge finally talking to Epps about his feelings towards her; he tells her that he managed to get the ghost who has been haunting and killing their crew members.
There is a glint of crazy in his eyes as he talks of taking away all of the gold, repairing the Graza, and moving toward the land. While he talks of starting afresh, a new life with all the gold, and how they would live together, both Epps and the audience feel that something is wrong.
The Truth Behind
Previously, Epps was confronted by the ghost of Katie, who tells her the truth about the hauntings and who is behind them. She tells him that a man resides on the seas and takes over the ships and the people’s minds. He pushes them off the cliff, forcing them to kill each other without even realizing it.
His identity is revealed to be that of Jack Ferriman, the weather service pilot we saw at the movie’s start. He is a dead man and has been for a long time. But his soul is trapped, and to finally get the release he needs, he is tasked with the demonic duty of getting people to act on their deepest will, to get them to sin and then kill them and drag them down to the depths of hell.
We are brought back to the present, where Dodge talks about their future together. Still, soon enough, he shows his true self only to reveal that it is Jack Ferriman, confirming that It was not Dodge who killed Frriman back inside but quite the opposite.
Epps quickly acts and easily fires the explosive in her hands, setting the Graza on fire and blowing Ferriman into pieces. The ship starts to sink, but Katie, the child ghost, comes in handy again when she helps Epps escape the sinking ship and get saved by another cruise.
The other ghosts finally release and go to heaven while Epps moves towards land. When we think everything would be fine, at least for Epps, we see the nine boxes of gold being put onto the cruise liner that helped Epps get ashore.
She also sees her crew members look-alike load all that gold and Ferriman overseeing their job. With literally nothing Epps could do but scream, her dead crew members remain trapped aboard, with Ferriman still looking just fine, dead but fine.
The Business of Temptations
Ferriman did not kill all of the crew. Instead, he provoked the members giving them the choice of acting upon their deepest darkest wishes or choosing to keep their sanity intact by not giving in. But people are easy to corrupt; Ferriman’s plan of pushing people off the cliff’s edge and eventually killing them to escape his dreadfully long life as a ghost was fine until Epps came along.
Not only did she not give in, but she also managed to free the other trapped souls and set the lost Graza on fire, finally releasing the ship from its tormenting journey of forty years on the sea. As good as she did, her crew is still dead, and while getting in the ambulance, she sees figures similar to those of her dead crew with crates of gold similar to the one they came across on Graza.
She also spots Ferriman looking at her with all the anger in the world but still overlooking the dead crew’s task. Epps screams because that is the only thing she can do when the realization dawns on her that her setting the ship on fire and blowing Ferriman into pieces did not result in anything.
He will continue roaming the sea and haunting ships, and more people will get killed; the cycle will probably never end, just that her crew will be involved this time. Ferriman as the villain, is not the worst case; for him, this is nothing more than a job. He sees no evil in his acts and feels he is doing nothing, considering he only follows orders.
He even compares himself to the salvaging crew saying that the two are similar in some aspects. He is only there to salvage the souls of the people aboard, and he does so by giving them a choice. The crew members surrender to their temptations instead of holding onto their dignity like Epps did.
Epps not giving in to her temptations ruins Ferriman’s plans and forces him to look for another ship to haunt, but that should not be difficult, considering temptations are one thing we have in abundance.
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