Ghost Ship (R)
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This came out in 2002, but I didn't see it until 2023. The general critical consensus seems to be that the opening scene is pretty great, but the rest of the movie sucks. Personally, I thought the whole movie was okay. The opening scene probably was the best part, but it's quite gruesome, so some people may not be able to stomach it. (I'm generally not a fan of gore, but this was inventive and absolutely horrifying.)

So anyway, it starts in 1962, aboard an Italian luxury liner called the Antonia Graza. We don't really get to know any of the passengers or crew before everyone is murdered, except for a girl named Katie Harwood (Emily Browning), though we do later learn via flashback that she was also murdered. (Part of what was so horrifying about the opening scene was her living through it.) Anyway, after everyone (or at least one large group of people) is killed, the movie flashes forward to the present, 40 years later. We meet the crew of a salvage vessel called the Arctic Warrior, including its captain, Sean Murphy (Gabriel Byrne); his business partner, Maureen Epps (Julianna Margulies); the first mate, Greer; and a few others of less interest to me. They are approached by a pilot named Jack Ferriman, who wants them to salvage a ship he'd discovered, which of course turns out to be the Antonia Graza. As they explore the ship, Epps sees the ghost of Katie, whom she finds scary at first, but who later tries to warn her about a greater danger she and her friends face.

I gotta say, for a ship that holds hundreds of trapped souls, we sure don't see a lot of ghosts. I can only recall three, and two of them were benign. But there is also a sort of demon, or something. And... I guess I don't want to reveal any more of the plot. Suffice to say not many people survive to the end of the movie. For the most part I don't think it was all that scary, though. At least I didn't find it boring or derivative, as many critics seemed to. But I'm not sure how much sense it made. Um, but there was one line Jack had early on that I liked a lot more in hindsight. Anyway, I'm glad to have finally seen the movie.