Rating: 2/5
A frazzled Jess rushes around to get ready to meet Greg at the harbor. She tries to take her son, Tommy, with her, but he is resistant. We meet Greg and the gang on the boat. Jess arrives just after Victor, looking distant but amicable. Jess goes inside the ship and naps. Victor tells Greg that Jess doesn’t seem to remember where her son Tommy is.
The trip goes smoothly until the wind suddenly stops. In the distance, a patch of black clouds approaches, almost like watercolor paint bleeding into the painting. Greg checks with the Coast Guard about the sudden change in weather, only for a distress signal to come in over the radio. A woman says, “She’s killing everyone. They’re dead. They’re all dead.”
The storm rages, capsizing the boat. Everyone gets on the overturned boat, and the storm leaves as quickly as it came. Soon, an ocean liner approaches. They board, but no one seems to be aboard. As they explore the boat, Jess gets a sense of déjà vu.
The film follows the gang as they explore this strange, vacant ship and a mysterious presence that follows them.
The dialogue is pretty weak, but it gets the job done. By the time we’re at the end, it approaches eye-rolling in how mechanical it is. The film also makes a blatant visual reference to another movie that, if you’ve seen it, will tell you what is happening in this movie.
That said, the movie has fun with visual cues and effects. We spend most of the runtime paying attention to details to see how everything will come together.
I don’t know why all these Aussie and Kiwi actors are putting on American accents. Most hold it down, but the Aussie accent slips in more than once.
An aside that doesn’t affect anything but annoys me is that the film confuses Aeoluses from Greek myth. The ruler of the winds, Aeolus, is not the father of Sisyphus — that one is the eponym of the Aeolians, one of the four major tribes of the Greek people.
I thought I might like this movie despite knowing it’s deal, but it’s not a well-realized rendition of a story we have ample examples of.