It must be harder than it looks to make a movie set aboard an ocean liner. Gritty dramas ("Souls at Sea"), thrillers ("Across the Pacific") or oceanic tearjerkers ("Titanic" & its predecessors") have scored, but among ghost stories set aboard ship, the nearest to the mark have been "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" & "Pirates of the Caribbean"--and it's generous to count either one of them. "Lost Voyage" doesn't really try very hard but is simply another installment in the Bermuda Triangle genre. Florida paranormal researcher Aaron (Nelson) learns that the cruise ship Corona Queen, which vanished in 1979 with his father & new stepmother--inspiring him to become a ghosthunter--has reappeared in the Triangle. She's in the middle of a growing tropical storm, of course, which may sink her at any time. Though proclaiming his reluctance, he inevitably brings his ectospotting-gear (once again, Man bites God with Gear) on a salvage mission. They're led by veteran, no-nonsense seascrounger Shaw (Henriksen) & backed by a TV station that sends both washed-up anchor Dana (Janet Gunn) & catty star reporter Julie (Chorvat), with nervous cameraman Randall (Richard Gunn) caught between the rivals. Hard-edged, good-hearted sea mechanics Dazinger (Kober) & Fields (Sheppard) round out the fateful team with occasional but much-needed comic relief. Of course the Corona Queen is just as she was before but passengers & crew are gone--or are they? Will the team find its answers, prevail or escape before the intense storm overcomes the drifting liner? Or will their own personal demons & rivalries tear them apart? The carelessness & cheapness that plague most SciFi Channel originals are largely absent from "Lost Voyage," which features a story of unusual depth (the characters must each face personal demons as well as supernatural foes & their own rivalries) even if it is predictable. A competent cast helps, too. Nelson's Aaron is a driven, fearless nerd, not unlike Richard Dreyfuss's Hooper in "Jaws," but more suitably somber here. Henriksen, the greatest sci-fi/action character actor since Harry Dean Stanton, is as solid as ever, bringing both believability & color to the tale. Stuntwoman Gunn is capable enough as the alternately bitter & optimistic TV reporter whose devotion to her craft usually overcomes her selfish ambition. The effects are pretty good, not spectacular enough to overwhelm the story & actors, used sparingly enough to enhance rather than distract. If you've never, ever heard of the Flying Dutchman, the Marie Celeste or the Bermuda Triangle, you'll find this movie enjoyable enough as a ghost thriller. Otherwise it's crushingly predictable, offering absolutely nothing that hasn't been done many, many times before in literature & film. "Lost Voyage" teases us early on with parapsychological mumbo-jumbo but that part of the story trails off into nothing. Even the great spooky-spoof "Ghostbusters" helped us out with that ("That's a BIG Twinkie"). There's an inherent pathos to ships, especially big ones, a sense that they're irrevocably tied to the times in which they sailed. They are machines yet somehow alive, servants yet grandly awesome. "Titanic" made so much money because it captured that theme & used it well. A pity that no nautical ghost story has yet been able to do the same.
Review of Lost Voyage
