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First
thing we see is the “City Heat” logo, which is okay, but
the soundtrack sounds suspiciously like that old Dolby thing, where
the helicopter flew over the city and so on. Of course, all
helicopters sound alike to me, so it's probably just a coincidence.
The credits proper start with a nice Rich McHugh score, and a
large cruise ship descending through filters to make it look like
it's underwater and sinking. We see various parts of the ship as the
credits roll, including a name, “Corona” all overlaid
with this watery distortion. The writing credit is genuinely odd:
story by Christian McIntire and Patrick Phillips, then the same names
in reverse order for the screenplay credit. I guess who thought of
what was pretty important.
And we start out with a black
screen and “Miami – 1972” for our flashback. It's
gotta be a flashback, right? Who's gonna set a movie in the
seventies? Well, yes, right, fine, I should have said, besides
Quentin Tarrantino. And we fade in on a guy buying his kid a
balloon. They are all boarding a huge cruise ship, waved aboard by a
smiling Erik Estrada type. (For the record, the hair and clothing
don't look near ugly enough to be 1972, but hey, low budget and all.
And CGI can only do so much.)
Kid with balloon doesn't seem to
be having a good time at all. And we soon find out why. Turns out
he's not going to go with dad and step-mom, because this little
voyage will be their honeymoon, their “alone time.” Kid
looks to be about 10, I don't suspect this sort of talk will work on
him...and I'm right. Step-mom gives him a present as a molifyer, and
he lets it drop to the gangplank, saying “She's not my
mother!”
“Aaron, that's a terrible thing to say!”
says dad. Um, well, perhaps he's not being nice, dad, but, uh, she
kind of isn't his mother, you know. Cough. Turns out the kid's
real mom is dead, so you can see where his issues spring up.
Now,
the cinematography during this bit is way overexposed, which is kind
of a cool way to evoke the 70's without all the awful fashions and
hair and stuff. It kind of looks like old slides from that era, all
burned out and faded. Kudos to whoever thought of this, McIntire or
Phillips.
Anyway, step-mom decides enough of this, and goes
on board. Dad tries to talk to Aaron, but he turns away to grandma (I
hope that's who it is—maybe old ladies in the 70's would just
be surrogate grandmas to anyone who hugged them?) and she kind of
waves at dad, saying, just go on and have a nice
honeymoon—homewrecker! Dad rises in frustration, and moves out
of frame.
And we cut to a late night storm. The screen caption
says 27 degrees N, 69 degrees W, 250 miles S.E. Of Bermuda. (Hey, we
got all four directions in there!) I'm sure I don't have to tell you
what all that means, the word “Bermuda” should give it
all away. Hey, do I have to draw you a triangle?
We cut inside
dad and step-mom's cabin. Dad apologizes for Aaron's behavior, but
step-mom says that he's “young” and he'll “accept
me when he's ready.” In a concession to the 70's bit she has
this awful pink and purple headband on.
“Do you think
he hates me?” asks Dad.
“Of course not,”
step-mom says, putting the present on the window sill. “He's a
little boy—who lost his mother. Parker [is this dad's name?],
give it time, okay? Give him time. He'll come around.”
Wow, this is quite a switch from the typical evil step-mom. And she
even takes off her headband. And draws dad a triangle—er, I
mean, draws dad closer to her, and as they kiss, electric piano music
starts easing its way into the frame.
Then we cut back
outside, to the boat in the storm. And I'm pretty sure this is all
CGI—the boat cuts straight through the water, for example—but
it's not badly done.
Back inside, the captain arrives
on the bridge. A radar screen shows some kind of heavy mass,
overlaying the top part of the screen—presumably, unless this
is a very short movie, right where they're headed. There's some
discussion about what it is (a squall? No) and the fact that it's
headed for them. And then one guy says it looks like land. The
captain says this is impossible.
He takes his binoculars and
decides to look out the window at whatever this is. The “looks
like land” guy (who has had all other dialogue other than the
captain—how low was your budget, again?) says it's now 200
yards away.
We cut to an outside shot, and see the ship
heading into what appears to be a very dense, and very electrical
cloud. And everyone on the bridge sees these odd, clay-y looking
clouds form, and boy do they panic. The captain calls for full
reverse on the engines, but come on, it's 1972, that's not going to
work. This is just the flashback!
Suddenly, the engine screws
just go dead. Back with Dad and Step-Mom, who are hugging on the bed
(1972, remember), and Step-Mom asks what's wrong as the electricity
arcs across the sky and the ship shakes. Oh, nothing much, I suppose.
Dad says he doesn't know.
Back at the bridge, the captain
calls for “full ahead” but this still doesn't do any
good.
Sure enough, the windows on the bridge burst inward
(don't think I've seen a ship-in-trouble movie that didn't have that
happen) and the cloud...crawls over the boat like an amoeba and
envelopes it.
In the hallways, the passengers run around like
idiots in a panic as the lights flash and the editor goes nuts with
his shock cuts. In dad and step-mom's room, the crack between the
doors lights up like the sun, and mist pours through the crack; a
skull face is briefly seen in this mist, she screams off camera, and
we cut to the outside to watch the last of the ship...which I guess
was called the Corona, nobody ever said...being swallowed by the
clouds. Fade to black.
And a title: “PRESENT DAY.”
What did I tell you? It was all just a flashback! And you were all
worried and stuff. No, no, you should have seen yourself! Ha ha, it
was classic.
Fade in on a fishtank, and we pan over to a
long-haired bearded guy with glasses,
talking into a tape recorder about the Mary Celeste. He relates the
story's details, which I won't repeat here (do a Google search)
except to say it's one of the most famous sea mysteries ever. The
Mary Celeste was found, completely deserted, but with no indication
that she was abandoned. The passengers and crew were simply gone.
(Some say Daleks did it, but you know, Daleks get blamed for a
lot.)
As he tells the story, we see him go back and revise
bits of it, and listen to playback, and generally give us the
impression he's not just talking to himself, but is preparing this
for a book or a magazine article or a manifesto or some damn thing.
He tries several different phrasings and it's kind of entertaining
watching Judd Nelson, for aye, it is he, going on an on. It
almost sounds like he's trying to spark his own enthusiasm for a
subject which has long grown cold, but won't properly die. Almost
like he was Aaron, the little boy from before, all grown up! Oh hell,
did I spoil it for you? Sorry.
Suddenly there's a dark figure
framed in his doorway. “That's always bothered you, hasn't it?”
asks the figure.
“I'm sorry, do I know you?”
asks, um, Judd Nelson. Judd Nelson.
“The similarities
between the two cases are remarkable,” says the Figure.
“What
two cases,” asks Judd Nelson.
“The Mary Celeste,
and the Corona Queen [ah HA!],” says the Figure.
“No,
not really, the Corona Queen has never been found,” Judd Nelson
points out.
“No,” the Figure agrees, “but we
have to get on with our lives. Goodbye.” And Figure moves
away.
Judd Nelson wants to know how Figure got in here and all
that. He rises from his chair and goes to the door, but Figure is
gone; instead, we have Wendy Robie popping out of the dark to say she
was just on her way to see Judd Nelson. (If you remember Wendy at
all, you probably remember her from Twin Peaks, where she had an eye
patch.)
Judd Nelson asks if Wendy Robie saw anyone just now,
and she says, no. Um hm, says Judd Nelson, then asks her into his
office. (This whole area is lit very dark, by the way. Nice contrast
with the 70's stuff, but it looks like everyone's working at midnight
or something.)
Wendy Robie asks Judd Nelson, “Have you
heard?”
“Uh, heard what?” Judd Nelson asks
distractedly as he puts his tapes and stuff away.
“You
really need to get out of the office more,” says Wendy Robie.
Is that what she heard?
No, the sudden music tells us
she means much, much more than this. I bet the similarities between
the Mary Celeste and the Corona Queen just increased by one. Who's
with me?
--I don't blame you. But it turns out I was right
this time! A fishing boat has found the Corona Queen. It's been all
over the news and everything, according to Wendy Robie.
Judd
Nelson looks properly shocked at this turn of events.
He asks
where, and is told (duh) that it's off Bermuda.
“Is
there a storm brewing out there?” he asks. (Aside: In every
movie set at sea that I've ever seen, there's always a storm brewing.
And there's only one radio. Etc.)
Wendy Robie says sure there
is, that's why no one's gone back out there to...uh, tow it in, I
suppose. I guess the fishing boat avoided the Corona Queen because it
had bad mojo, mon. Maybe.
Anyway, Judd Nelson reacts to this
news, and Wendy Robie asks if he's sure he's okay.
“Yeah,”
he says (repeatedly). “Sometimes I just hate being right.”
Oh—tell me about it!
“You're talking about
that 'triangle' theory,” says Wendy Robie. Judd Nelson nods yes
at this. “Well, don't let Holstein get wind of it,” Wendy
Robie goes on, “or he'll rake you over the coals, again.
Remember last time?”
“Holstein is an idiot, with
no imagination—he has no business running this institute,”
Judd Nelson says.
“Maybe not,” says Wendy Robie.
“But he brings in the funding. And you have to admit, some of
your stuff is a little 'out there.'”
“[Wendy
Robie], quantum physics aside,” says Judd Nelson, “we
study psychic and paranormal phenomena...everything we do is a little
bit 'out there.'”
“You really need to think about
taking a vacation,” says Wendy Robie. Hey, how about a cruise!
Ha ha ha.
And we cut to a broadcast of some kind of show, with
a woman in a Southern accent saying that “then, my husband
returned from the grave. You think something like that can't happen
to you, but it can,” she says smugly. Hey, if I just visit
a grave, it should be real easy to return from it!
...or did
you mean, his own grave? Oh, now, that's just too
spooky!
Well, we pull back from this, and see it is a tape
being played for some producer types. Like the place where Judd
Nelson was, this location is seriously underlit. Yeah, I suppose you
could say it's because they're watching this video and don't want
lights, you know, washing it out or something.
And as long as
we're freeze-framed, let's point out that, from what we can see, our
producer types are hot blonde chick and guy with serious sideburns
(argh, we're back in 1972! Ha ha, just kidding.)
Anyway,
Blonde Lady says that the footage is really bad, she can't show it to
the network.
“Hey, you pick 'em, I just shoot 'em,”
says Sideburns, but just then there's a knock on the wall.
A
very tall brunette lady walks in and hands the two of them “the
morning transcripts.” As they look them over, Brunette seems to
be waiting for something.
Finally, she asks “Dana”
(Blonde Lady) if she's still going on vacation next month. Dana says
yup, and Brunette asks if she can have the “Bronzeville”
assignment then.
Dana says she doesn't feel comfortable with
that.
Fine, says Brunette, but she says she already ran it by
“Kaplan” and this “Kaplan” thought it was “a
really good idea.”
Well, both Dana and Sideburns perk up
at this.
“...you don't think I went behind your back?”
asks Brunette.
“No, no...no, it's...all right,”
says Dana. But you can tell she doesn't think that stuff at all, and,
in fact, thinks Brunette did go behind her back. But she says
it's okay anyway. Then she suddenly spots something of interest. She
tells “Julie” (Brunette) to get everything she can on the
Bermuda Triangle, and the Corona Queen. And she tells Sideburns to
get a film crew together, including infrared, time-lapse, etc.
Julie
asks where the two of them are going, and when told they are
“checking out a story,” she turns to the camera with a
look. Or, perhaps I should say, A Look.
Sure enough,
Dana is in her office, and some bald guy comes in to schmooze, then
asks if she's “got a minute.” And she says sure. Oh, come
on, “got a minute” is the worst thing you can hear! Well,
other than “you're fired” and “the running time is
an hour longer than the box says,” and “Mr. Spock
personally hates you,” I mean.
Bald Guy says he's been
talking to “the suits” about “ratings” and he
mentions “new blood” and Dana's no fool.
“Julie,”
she says. And Bald Guy says yep. Dana asks if she's too old now? And
Bald Guy smoozes over this by lying a lot.
Now, personally, I
as the viewer here, think Dana is Hot and Julie is way too dim to be
Hot. And I'm not the president or anything, but I am the viewer here.
Just making conversation, and stuff.
The gist of the
conversation betwixt Dana and Bald Guy is that Julie is an up and
comer, and Dana shouldn't fight this. And...
...well, then we
cut to some rather obviously CGI rain outside an apartment, and we
cut inside to some photos of Aaron and his Dad when times were good.
Sure enough, it's Judd Nelson, looking through his scrapbook of
bitter tears and memories of what might have been. I suppose I should
just toss the other shoe and start calling him “Aaron”
now, but I've typed Judd Nelson so many times I...don't think I can
quit that easily. Judd Nelson Judd Nelson Judd Nelson. This may take
some time.
Well, anyway, he's paging through his world of
memories, and there's a knock on the door. It's Dana. She introduces
herself, but he admits he's seen her show (“Journals of the
Unexplained”) sometimes, though it kind of looks as though he's
somewhat dismissive of the hard work she has put into this show, and
the fact that her hard work has been for naught may be the same with
Mr. Nelson! Wow, the double-packed irony.
After complementing
her on her appearance (“Thank you, I think” she replies),
“I think I know what you're here for,” Judd Nelson says,
“would you like to come in?”
The door closes, and
Dana says she is pressed for time, can she get to the point?
No,
Judd Nelson says. Actually, he says “I'd like you to see
something first,” but it's the same result.
He whips
out his...scrapbook (thank you, Mel Brooks!) and shows a picture of
Aaron when the tragedy of the Corona Queen was made manifest. He says
he was eight years old then, and every couple of years since, someone
has come to him for a “new angle.”
Dana
acknowledges his misgivings, but says that this time there is a new
angle, and she'd like an exclusive, blah blah.
“Yeah,”
says Judd Nelson, “would this air before the two-headed alien
baby, or after, 'I took a shower with Satan'?”
She
points out that that was one of their highest rated shows (kind of
funny, here's some points for that). Then she takes off her coat, and
goes through that he must have already gone through a lot, “think
of it, a young boy, saying goodbye to his parents, the Corona Queen
disappears, and then, the ship returns...and you go aboard, to say
your final goodbye.”
“Go aboard?” asks Judd
Nelson.
“We're flying out to the ship in four hours,”
Dana says. “Will you go?”
“I dunno,”
says Judd Nelson. And Dana reveals that she has done her homework,
re: Judd Nelson's interests in paranormal stuffs.
“We
talk the same language,” she says.
“I don't think
so,” says Judd Nelson. “I see the paranormal as a field
of scientific study. You see it as a way of exploiting people's
fears.” He also points out that his interest in the Triangle is
purely personal, not part of the Institute's realm.
“You
can't tell me that you're not intrigued,” she says, and he hems
and haws a bit.
Ultimately, he says he doesn't feel
comfortable with her exploiting his father's death for TV ratings. He
tells her, thus, he's not going to go, but we know how these things
turn out, don't we? Judd Nelson's name is first on the box, hint
hint.
Anyway, she politely leaves, and gives him her phone
number in case he changes his mind.
He stammers a bit. “You
know...I was kind of expecting the hard sell,” he tells
her.
“No, that's Dean Lawson, from Adventures in the
Paranormal,” she says. “We're the good guys.” And
she leaves.
And we cut back to the building that houses the
production company, and Dana walks in just as Bald Guy is hugging
Julie in the hall and she's thanking him for the big chance he has
just bestowed upon her (so that's what they call it these days). Bald
Guy, seeing Dana, reacts as if stung and becomes less, er, personable
with Julie.
This is the most seriously underlit production
company ever. All they have for lights are spotlights, which just
happen to illuminate the action. This may be a clever way to hide
inadequacies in the set, which is a good idea, but I just can't
imagine anyone working in either this environment, or the one where
Judd Nelson works.
Anyway, Julie walks off, and Bald Guy asks
Dana how the story's going, etc, she says she has a helicopter and a
couple of crew, it's all going great. Bald Guy flattens her
enthusiasm with the “Uh, one thing...” that Julie is
going with her.
She's pretty put out about this. He points out
that she will need to get some experience if she's going to take over
for Dana while Dana is on vacation. Dana wonders if this is just a
vacation, or should she polish up her resume? Bald Guy asks if she's
worried that Julie will get better ratings.
“What kind
of ratings are we talking about,” asks Dana with just a tad of
sarcasm.
He says it's just business, it's not personal.
She
gives in, and hopes Julie is ready. And we cut back to Judd Nelson,
lounging in his chair and sipping a brewski, while he's watching
something on TV about oil workers. He slouches further into the chair
and nods off. As the camera floats around the chair, he starts
getting these rapid-flash, second-sight things of his dad, the
present he scorned, stormy weather, scary dolls, demon people,
rushing through the ship's hallways—all done in microseconds,
like the similar stuff in (cough) Event Horizon.
The phone
wakes him up, and he listens to warped monster type noises. Then he
picks up Dana's phone number.
And now we're at the airport and
it's still pouring rain, but...no matter, for there with an
umbrella is Lance Henrikson, with his two crew-men. A van pulls up,
and Dana, Julie and so-and-so, the cameraman (didn't catch his
name—oh, it's Sideburns. Well, he's Cameraman now.) all pop
out. Lance Henrikson is introduced as an owner of the cruise line
that had the Corona Queen, hence his interest.
Lance is pretty
hard-nosed until he sees Julie, then he's all smiles and shakes her
hand. Lance, you letcher, you! Lance introduces his two crewmen as
“this is him, and that's him.” They're both veterans of
The X-Files, one played “Bear” in the episode “Ice”
(about the worms that take people over) and the other played Cecil
L'Ively in the episode “Fire” about the guy who could
control fire. Both Fire and Ice...someone in the casting department
had a good sense of humor or something. Cecil, of course, was last
seen in these pages in Deep Shock.
Anyway, Dana gives Lance
half the money for flying them all out to the wreck. Lance is
apparently interested in salvaging the Corona. Soon, everyone is
piling aboard, hauling equipment boxes and what-not. Lance Henrikson
says it's time to go, Dana says, wait, there's one more person, Lance
says the storm is getting worse, etc, etc.
And finally Judd
Nelson drops out of a cab, ready to go. His terms are no melodrama or
theatrics, and Dana says Okay. Judd Nelson says he is placing his
trust in her.
And finally, everyone is airborn. Looks like
CGI rain, and maybe a CGI copter as well. Not bad, though, nice
smooth motion.
On board, it seems we continue the cinematic
tradition of having people talk while on a noisy helicopter, but this
time there's an excuse, as Judd Nelson and Lance Henrikson introduce
one another (also it's a huge helicopter, so the passenger area is
pretty quiet). Lance seems pretty friendly, even when (at the
prompting of Lance's “you look familiar” line), Judd says
his family sued Lance's company. Lance isn't mad, though, as he says
that was before his time.
Lance asks Judd about his stuff, and
Judd says it's stuff for detecting paranormal things, and he's
generally not at all nice to Lance. Which is rather a shame, as Judd
is the first person in the group to whom Lance has shown any interest
(other than Julie).
And the helicopter moves on through the
storm, the pilot complains about the amount of fuel, and back in the
back, Ice and Fire are playing poker. They ask Cameraman if he wants
to join in—he does—and they offer him their flasks. But
he declines, saying he went sober three years ago. He asks the two of
them what they think about the Bermuda Triangle.
Fire
basically goes through a litany of genuine causes (storms, faulty
navigation, bad equipment), finishing with “it's a big pond;
people get lost.”
“Unless you believe the legend,”
says Ice casually. Cameraman takes the bait.
Fire steps in:
“Some people say, the Triangle is like a door to someplace
else.”
“Sometimes the door opens one way,
sometimes, the other,” Ice finishes.
“A door to
where?” asks cameraman.
“Well, that's the
question, innit?” says Fire. “Some people say, the door
opens to the very bowels of Hell
itself.”
Judd Nelson comments, “Well, there is
some research that seems to substantiate that theory.” He
pauses, and looks around. “Then again, it may just be a
boatload of bulls**t.”
Just then, the copter hits a
patch of turbulence and everyone's tossed
around a bit. We get a very significant quick shot of Julie's purse
falling to the ground, and disgorging...um, a stun gun? Even in
freeze-frame it's hard to tell. (Turns out, yes, stun gun.)
The
three continue with their card game.
And the helicopter finds
the Corona Queen, and flies around it a bit. With the storm and all,
it hides the CGI pretty well, though (aside from the copter and the
rain) it almost looks like a still photograph.
And Ice gets
into the lowering cage thing, and some bald black guy we've never
seen before helps him in, and he's lowered to the ship. The film
skips a bit to show us is Judd Nelson going down in the cage thing,
and everyone is on the ship now, and the cage thing is brought back
up, and Judd Nelson watches the helicopter depart, probably thinking
this was a bad idea after all.
Meanwhile, Lance Henrikson
and the others have gone to the bridge to see what kind of damage
they're looking at. Hey, after thirty years, what damage could there
be?
Well, there's the windows for starters. Lance throws his
umbrella out through the smashed panes. Lance, don't litter! Julie
starts filming with her camcorder, and asks what happened to the
windows. Fire says it looks like they were “attacked,”
and to the question “by what?” Ice answers with
“pirates,” pointing out that there were a lot during the
seventies, though they usually didn't attack cruise ships.
Fire
counters with “terrorists” and Ice asks what happened to
the bodies? Um, how about being tossed overboard?
Lance asks
one of the “hims” to cover the windows, and suggests they
use the crew's mess for headquarters.
Out
in the hall, Judd Nelson stumbles in, and Dana starts camcordering
him, narrating about the Corona Queen and the fate of his parents.
Through the camcorder, she asks him how he's feeling.
He says
he's wet, hungry and concerned that the helicopter flew off with one
of his bags still aboard.
She lowers the camcorder, and says
that she thought they had a deal. He says sure, sure, but he's not
happy about how this is starting, and she counters with the fact that
she has to get “into” his head. Which is not
unreasonable, given that they have a returning ghost ship and a
relative of one of its victims.
She says she's sorry, notes
that it must be difficult for him to be here, and walks off. And
then, as he goes to follow, we hear eerie noises, and the music does
an undercurrent of menace. Judd turns and looks around, but dismisses
whatever it is.
And we cut to the mess hall, and Lance is
looking over blueprints, and the others are gathering their
equipment. Cameraman goes over his various equipment. He and Judd
compare stuff, and it turns out Judd's stuff is the new hotness.
Fire and Ice show up and say they've covered the windows, but
most of the panels on the bridge are all rusted up. Lance notes that
there's no rust or corrosion anywhere else, after 25 years at sea.
Which a) seems damn remarkable and a bit spooky-like, and b) means
this is taking place in 1997.
Then Lance gets down to
business. He says that he's the captain, he's in charge, and he wants
no arguments with his orders. First off, “Nobody goes off by
themselves without telling others.” He also wants people to
stay out of the passenger area, at first. “We don't want
anybody hurt on this trip.”
That
seems to be the extent of his speech, but it's pretty remarkable that
safety, and not profit, is first and foremost with him. You have to
admit, that's pretty unusual. He then tosses the blueprints to Fire
and Ice and tells them to get the power going. He says they have 24
hours to get the ship towed by his company, or they lose it to the
Coast Guard. “Clock's ticking,” he says, and Fire, Ice
and Judd go down to find the power, while Dana wants some history on
the ship from Lance. He says he'll help her all he can, but the
“clock's ticking.”
And we cut to follow Fire, Ice
and Judd (sounds like a business the Three Stooges would come up
with) as they look for the generator room. Judd asks them about what
their business is on the ship, and Fire mentions “the illegal
kind” while Ice says that they're really not supposed to be
here, but “money talks.” How they're breaking the law
isn't exactly spelled out here, but one can assume that this is a
set-up for when someone smashes the only working radio rather than
call for help. Or so it would seem.
Anyway, with a worried
close-up, Judd follows after the two “hims.” (All the
while he's ghostbustering with his scanner.)
Well, they find
the engine room, but Judd is picking up an unusual metaphasic
variance in his flux capacitor, so he's
going to wander to the source. Ice gives him a flashlight and warns
him not to open any freezers. At Judd's question why, the guys point
out that there's twenty-five years of dead food in them, sealed up.
They relate a story about a “tuna boat” they found after
five months abandoned, and the story is about how gross it is. So
they all imagine that multiplying five months by, um, carry the one,
hm, um...a lot, would mean the grossness quotient would be
exponential. Double-yuck-o would be the layman's term.
So,
with a cheery wave, Fire and Ice go to do their work, while Judd
Nelson goes off to find...terror! He's poking along a corridor, and
goes into a kitchen with a bunch of canned goods everywhere. And his
ghostbuster thing is beeping like crazy. And he finds a whole box of
severed heads! Oh, did I say severed heads? Sorry, sorry, I
meant potatoes. Which are not rotten at all, but look pretty
fresh. Fresh from Hell itself, ha ha ha!
He continues poking
around, and the music is very ominous and stuff. And we cut back to
Fire and Ice. They talk about how they don't think the generator will
work, but Ice turns a switch, and everything turns on. This doesn't
cheer them, though (perhaps they can hear the music on the
soundtrack), and Fire says there's “definitely something going
on here.”
And back with Judd Nelson, he finds the
ghostbusterometer going crazy at the door to one cabin.
But we
cut back to Dana, Julie and Lance, and Dana asks about the history of
the ship. Lance, in full PR mode, says he'll try and then gives a
pretty darn thorough history of the ship. But then he sees Judd at
the cabin door, and he gets all mad, and Dana tells Cameraman to “cut
it” and that they'll “pick it up later.” Naturally,
as he lowers the camera, it pans across Dana's chest...total
coincidence, I'm certain...
Lance goes up to berate Judd about
wandering off by himself, Judd tries to explain himself (“I was
just taking some readings”) but Lance is adamant that orders is
orders. Just then, all the power comes on, including Latin muzak.
(It's worth noting that this is the first well-lit interior OR
exterior the film has had since the 1972 prologue.)
Lance
congrats the two “hims” on getting the power on, and
requests the muzak be turned off. After a bit of bickering, it's
turned off. Cameraman is getting some weird readings on his sound
setup, though. While Judd looks anxiously at the cabin he was at, the
other three go off to find this odd squeaky
sound. After a moment, Judd follows. The sound more resembles
someone strumming a metal fence, or dealing wooden playing cards
against a tin table, or maybe dragging chains. Viewer's choice.
The
find the room and open the door, and it's the ship's playroom, or
daycare play center...something decorated for kids. And the sound is
coming from a rocking horse, moving by itself. Lance points out that
since they're on water, things will move when the ship moves, so it
isn't spooky at all.
“I don't think so,” says
Judd. “That seems more like--”
And the rocking
stops.
Cameraman thinks this is cool, he keeps shooting it.
“More like what?” asks Dana.
“Like someone
is riding it,” says Judd.
Then Julie pipes up, saying
the room is “hot” with psychokinetic energy; Lance asks
why this room, Judd says sometimes children are more susceptible. He
then points out the drawings on the wall.
The drawings,
apparently arranged chronologically, show happy boat activities until
the last few, when we get dark spectres, bleeding passengers, and
general indications of some sort of mayhem. “Something happened
in here,” Judd Nelson says.
And the door takes this
opportunity to slam loudly. And basically everyone's heart skips a
beat or two.
Dana wants to get the “gear” in
here, and Lance storms out, saying he doesn't “have time for
this crap.” As he exits, we see the door across the hall, which
is numbered 419. The door that Judd Nelson was at, half a corridor,
was 418 (as near for both numbers as I can make out, of course). I
think this is a sign that their sets weren't very large.
“This
is what we came for,” says Dana.
And we cut back to the
mess hall, where everyone but the “hims” has assembled.
Lance is talking to the “hims” via walkie talkie about
what still needs to be done, while the others are watching the
playback of Lance's earlier talk about the history of the boat.
Just
then, Judd spots something on the tape. He tells Dana to go back, and
like an idiot, I hit the “back” button on the DVD remote.
Judd Nelson, your personality is just too forceful! Cease bending me
to your will, at once!
Anyway, what Judd spotted was a
spectral child, riding the rocking horse.
Down in
engineering, Fire and Ice are still trying to get the rest of the
ship up and working. Ice says he's going to go down to a junction
place of some kind. Fire bets he can get the whole place working
before Ice even gets down there. Well, with the word “bet”
both are galvanized (you'll remember the poker scene earlier). And
they set off on their respective tasks.
Back up in the mess
hall, Cameraman asks Judd if he's ever seen anything like “that,”
and Judd says nope. He says that most of his work is “clinical”
and that ghosts are a “side-interest.”
“Well,
it's just that you seem awfully damn calm,” says Cameraman, who
clearly isn't. “I mean, I feel...freaky. Like my stomach just
dropped out.”
Judd points out that he, Cameraman, should
be happy; that there are people who would “kill” for what
Cameraman saw today.
“If we make it back with the
footage,” says Cameraman.
“Yeah,” says Judd
Nelson, and walks away.
Cameraman calls Dana on the radio, to
say he's got one camera up and the rest should be ready
shortly.
Dana acknowledges, and then has her own flashback of
a sick relative, attended by priests and doctors (bits of choral
music here).
And she starts walking down a corridor. There's
ghost ambiance, heartbeat, and scary music
aplenty, and the whole thing is in slow-motion. She approaches a
smoke-filled room, lit with white-hot lights, and as she
enters--
--she turns into a little girl, maybe twelve years
old, but clearly Dana. She's walking into the sick room where the
relative is. And she reaches out, and turns off the life-support
system. The relative dies. And Dana is shocked back into the present,
and she covers her mouth with her hands. “I am so sorry,”
she sobs. (Well, nothing like Unresolved Issues to bring out the
ghosts, eh? Still, it was very well done.)
Down in the
junction-power-room place, Ice is looking over the equipment.
And
back in the other engineering place, Fire is trying to get his stuff
going (remember, the bet) and he opens up a big panel in the lower
part of the wall. As he crouches, and sticks the upper half of his
body into the opening, a figure passes in front of the camera. The
music sting tells us this isn't Anyone We Know.
Back in the
other place, Ice is also flipping switches (gotta win that bet!) and
stuff. They call and taunt each other about the progress being made.
And each continues messing with wires and switches and things of an
electrical nature. While boasting to the other over their radios, of
course.
Fire pushes himself further in amongst the wiring. And
we cut to a water valve, of the kind you'd see on the side of your
house if you owned a house, and it slowly starts turning on its own.
Water begins pouring onto the floor...slowly moving toward Fire.
Ice says he's about to activate the main relays. Fire calls
to tell him to “hold on” but his signal is broken up.
Neither of them can communicate to the other, and the water finally
reaches Fire.
Ice makes a rather personal remark about the
radios, and throws the switch.
Fire is covered in electrical
discharge and starts screaming. Sparks go off all around him. There
are a few very quick cuts of his face burning up (sorry for you gore
fans). Ice realizes something is wrong and runs back up to where he
left Fire. Or back down...he runs down a staircase...at any rate,
they're in different locales, okay?
Lance calls in to find
out what's up, and Ice says something's happened to Fire. Lance
replies that he's on his way.
They both get there at the same
time, and if you gore fans will freeze-frame at just the right
instant, you can see a fairly gruesome
burned up, bloody skeleton. “The right instant” is the
operating phrase here, as the camera does not linger at all, but pans
up to Ice and Lance, looking pretty shocked and distressed. Oh, and
there's a shot of what seems to be a burned-up naked bone, as Lance
reaches down to grab a knapsack next to it.
And Lance checks
to see if the money is okay. Which it is. Lance, you heartless
creep!
Or not—the next scene shows him (and Ice) back in
the mess hall, and he tosses the money in front of Dana, and says the
deals off, “we gotta get off this ship, I tried to contact the
Coast Guard but the radios are all out.”
“Wait a
minute, you tried to reach the Coast Guard?” shouts Dana.
“Yes
I did, there's a man dead on this ship, they're gonna want to
interview everybody.”
“We are not supposed to be
here, you know that,” says Dana. And this is news to everyone
else.
There's a bit of arguing, and lots of finger-pointing,
and Dana points out that Julie probably likes this a lot (being bad
for Dana's career and all) but Lance sticks by his guns: he has lost
a man and the safety of everyone else is paramount.
Can I hear
a brass band? I mean, finally, finally we have a guy who by
rights should want to hush everything up, smash the radio to keep it
quiet, and so on, and he wants to do the right thing.
Let me
repeat that: he wants to do the right thing.
Well,
there's a lot of yelling until Ice (kind of drunk) stand up and
shouts at everyone and says the deal is off, it's time to go.
And
the phone rings. No, no, I'm serious! The phone rings. In the
movie.
Lance takes charge and answers it. But then he hands it
to Ice. “It's for you,” he says.
We hear basically
nothing of the conversation—the phone voice is a more sinister
version of the teacher in the Charlie Brown shows, and Ice just asks,
“Where?” and “What?” before the line hangs
up.
He tries to hang up the phone, but it just falls. “That
was [Fire],” he says.
“What did he say?”
asks Judd Nelson.
“What did he say,” orders Lance
Henrikson.
“There's something we should see, up on the
bridge,” Ice replies.
And we cut to them approaching the
bridge. No one thinks this is a good idea, but Ice is going anyway
(he and Fire were best pals and all) and they all follow him in.
And they see the radar screen, showing something massive and
dense at the top of the screen, heading toward them. “Three,
four hours tops” says Lance Henrikson, before it will be upon
them.
“So [Fire] was trying to warn us,” says Ice.
Everyone thinks this is plausible, but wonder, from what.
Lance
orders Ice to get the radio working, tells the others to get packed
up to leave, and asks Judd Nelson to come with him, “to get
[Fire]'s body.” They leave as Ice tries to fix the radio...by
turning it on. Oooookay....
Down below, Fire's body is
missing. Judd Nelson asks if they were sure he was dead. Lance
Henrikson gives The Look that only he can, and says, yes, he's sure.
“Dead men don't just get up and walk away, do they.”
“And
you're sure about that?” asks Judd.
“Come on, Judd
Nelson, let's not talk in circles, you're supposed to be the expert
in this, why don't you help me, here.”
Judd says that it
was probably an accident, a horrible accident, but there are other
possibilities. And he asks Lance how long he's been in this
business.
“All my life, why?”
“Then
you've heard stories about the Triangle, about the ships that come
back,” says Judd.
“That's all horse[puckey]”
says Lance.
“Is it?”
“Yeah!”
Judd
says a lot of things, the most important is his closer, “What
we have seen today, defies explanation!”
“That's
it, that's it, hold that thought, I've heard enough of this crap,”
Lance mutters and walks away. So, he's not only stubborn where safety
is concerned, he's stubborn about everything else. Remember, it's
only a foolish consistency that's the hobgoblin of little minds.
“Stop!” calls out Judd Nelson. “Have you
looked for the captain's log yet?”
“NO! “
yells Lance. “Why?”
“Find it,” says
Judd.
“What for, what for!”
“I don't
know, exactly, it's just a feeling,” says Judd. Geez, Judd, how
about, it may have some clues as to what's happening? I mean,
they all saw the kid on the rocking horse; stubbornness
can be a virtue, Lance, but you're carrying it way too far without an
ulterior motive. Unless you're just scared, which is as good an
explanation as any.
Well, this conversation remains
unresolved. And we next see Lance storming onto the bridge, being all
mad at Ice. Ice, for his part, has fixed the radio and called the
helicopter. But the helicopter says it will be four hours at best
before he can get there.
Ice says they have a “situation”
here, but helicopter says there's a hurricane heading toward the
Corona Queen.
No one takes this as good news. And then the
radio gives out again. Let me tell you, moods do not improve over
this.
Ice asks if they got Fire's body. Lance says no,
because the body's gone. He goes over to look at the radar screen,
but Ice is pretty ticked off about this “no Fire body”
thing, and he yells a lot at Lance, and Lance fires him. Ice laughs
at this. Lance laughs at this too, and they exchange insults (it's
the gift that keeps on giving) and Ice leaves the bridge.
And
a shot of the radar screen shows that the Whatever-It-Is is a lot
closer now.
Lance takes this as perhaps a good opportunity to
check out that old “Captain's Log” theory that Judd
Nelson had. Because, hey, maybe a good ghost story will calm his
nerves.
Out in the hall, Judd is waving his ghostbusterometer
around, and the signal starts really beepin', and of course the
lights fail just about then. Me, I would call that two strikes.
And the movie winds up the pitch. It's looking at signals,
checking the crowd. You know, it's a beautiful spring day here at
motion picture field, and at bat, we have young Judd Nelson. He's got
two strikes, this pitch will be the gold or the glory. Judd looks
nervous, as well he might, and he watches the movie, checking,
checking....he turns on his flashlight. The movie ramps up the spooky
music. The flashlight is unreliable! Is that another strike, or a
foul ball? The umpire is in conference...turns out it's a foul...so
Judd is still in the game. And the movie throws the pitch--
--and
it's Judd Nelson, now appearing in some other corridor, surrounded by
monster noises, and before him is his father, sitting in a chair,
while behind him are...well, they're rags, but they're supposed to be
scary looking, and we'll give points on intent.
Judd Nelson's
dad holds out the present, and there's an ominous noise, and Judd
Nelson is suddenly back in the corridor he was in before.
He's
still alive, so that would constitute a base hit, I suppose. I don't
know much about baseball to be honest.
Anyway, Judd Nelson
runs away the way he came, and we see hands (presumably those of
Lance Henrikson) riffling through papers and folders and such in the
(again, presumably) captain's quarters. He's examining everything,
including what looks like a textbook (he flips through the pages,
maybe thinking, Hey, he could have had time to have his log
illustrated, bound and printed). Finally, he finds it. He frantically
goes through the pages, until he finds a drawing (in red ink) of some
kind of devil monster head, overlooking a sailing scene. (The image
is only there for a fraction of a second, and even freeze-frame
doesn't quite make it clear.) He looks suitably worried about
this.
And we cut to Julie, typing away at something (actually,
she's pushing switches on the video monitor, there's just a lot of
them I guess. Cameraman shows up, they banter a bit, he goes close to
turn something on, and she accuses him of drinking (you'll recall in
the helicopter, Cameraman said he'd been sober three years).
Well,
he says no I haven't, and she says yes you have, and this goes on far
longer than you would expect with some alleged adults, but he finally
admits that yes, he was drinking. And he pulls his bottle out and
takes a big ol' swig.
Julie points out that the network paid
for his rehab, but she says not to worry, it'll “be our little
secret. On one condition.” In answer to his inquiries, Julie
says Dana has screwed this project up, and it's gonna bite her, and
all Cameraman has to do is back her up, and when Dana is fired and
Julie takes over, Cameraman will be her cameraman.
Cameraman
looks thoughtful for minute, and makes a hand gesture like, “Guess
I got no choice,” but it's actually something else.
“Uh,
hi, guys,” he says, waving at Dana and Judd Nelson in the
doorway. So, now it's all out in the open. And Julie, acting about
like we'd expect, decides she's going to go off on her own. Cameraman
tries to stop her, but she gets him with the stun-gun. The others go
to his aid, and Julie stalks off in a huff for parts unknown.
She
passes Ice on her way into the bowels of
the ship, and whips out her camcorder and starts dictating her story.
She's got the camera right on her face, which is good for maximum
star-power I suppose but it's not going to be a big renter at
Blockbuster.
Back in the mess hall, Lance shows up and is
briefed on the situ, and says that the helicopter is on the way, so
they need to find Julie. He also says that there's a bigger
problem.
He tells Ice and Judd to go search forward. (He also
apologizes to Ice.) Lance will go down, er, backward or wherever
the other part of the ship is.
Back to Julie, walking along
with her camcorder (pointed at the action this time), and we hear
spectral voices. She approaches a doorway. “Hello, who's
there?” she calls out, but she goes through the doorway. (The
sound work throughout this movie, from the music to the sound effects
to the ambiance, is really great.)
She
looks through the camcorder into a completely dark room, and on the
camcorder screen is the image of...an office. Someone, on the little
screen, walks through the doorway and approaches Julie. “Too
bad about Dana...a real tragedy,” says some mousy girl to the
camera. The camera follows this girl down the hall, which we now see
is the television studio where they all work. And Bald Guy comes out
of sound stage and greets Julie by name. “So glad to see you.
You're on the air in ten minutes.”
“I am? What is
all this?”
“What is all this?” Bald Guy
repeats incredulously. “Julie, it's your show.”
“My
show?”
“It is now.” He smiles broadly at her
and hands her her “new contract. Now come on. We have to
hurry.”
And the camera now follows Bald Guy through
another doorway. “Make up!” he yells, and the mousy girl
and another move forward with makeup stuff, and we cut to Julie
sitting at her desk. Bald Guy tells her she was the one who always
should have been hosting the show, and he takes her by the hand and
leads her out of the office. Before they get too far, mousy girl
approaches and says Julie has a phone call.
Bald Guy takes
the phone, tells the caller that “someone will get back to
you,” and hangs up. Then he points her to the hostess seat for
the show. And he repeats how she should have been hosting the show
from the beginning. “Now,” he says, and gets this very
creepy, unblinking expression on his face, and he shoves a clipboard
at her, “sign your contract.”
She takes the
contract, and Bald Guy's pen, and signs the contract.
“Good,”
he says, pulling back. “Now...it's showtime.” He steps
back further, near a huge camera. “You're rolling in
five...four...three...” We move in on Julie's smiling
close-up--
--and suddenly we're back in the dark recesses of
the lower decks; a bulkhead door slams shut, and we hear a scream.
Out on the ocean, the scream echoes around the ship.
Cut to
Ice and Judd, looking for Julie and calling out to her. Lance is
doing the same. We follow them both in parallel for a while as they
move through the corridors and down stairwells.
Finally, Ice
stops, and Judd behind him asks what's wrong.
“There's
someone up there,” says Ice. He moves forward quickly, and Judd
can't keep up. In a doorway, he sees Fire, who smiles at him. Ice
moves to follow, into a room with a lot of chains. (Watch out for
Cenobites, they bite.)
Just before Judd gets to the room
where Ice is, the door slams and locks, keeping him out. And a huge
chain (I assume used by the anchors) begins to spool out onto the
floor. Judd Nelson begins throwing himself against the door in an
attempt to break it open (it's the most animated I've seen Judd all
evening). Ice kind of stands there, watching the chain pile up. For
some reason, instead of moving backwards into the room behind him,
Ice tries to run through to the door, and in so doing, gets knocked
down by a length of chain. The rest of the chain continues to fall on
him, covering him.
Judd runs and gets a fire ax, and breaks
the window and opens the door. Ice is beginning to spit up blood.
Judd asks what he can do, and Ice manages to tell him about the “kill
switch” and where it is. He finds something that looks likely,
pulls it, and something huge and heavy with rope attached falls right
onto Ice's face. Blood goes everywhere.
Uh, Judd, I don't
think that's what Ice meant by a “kill switch,” but you
meant well I'm sure.
He runs to see how Ice is, and slips and
falls in the blood. He sees what's what, and is not the happiest of
campers.
Back in the mess hall, Lance puts a camcorder on the
table. “This is all I found,” he says. “What about
Julie?” asks Cameraman.
“This is all I found,”
Lance emphasizes.
Judd Nelson shows up, blood all over his
hands. He grabs some napkins.
“Where's [Ice]?”
asks Lance. Judd tells him the story. “Someone raised the
anchor,” Lance muses.
“No one raised the
anchor,” says Cameraman, “don't you get it? This ship is
killing us off one by one!”
Judd asks about Julie,
Cameraman says they just found the camera, so she's probably dead
too. He starts going off the deep end, and Lance orders him to shut
up, and even pulls a knife on him.
“Don't make me cut
your [expletive] tongue out,” Lance threatens.
Cameraman calms down.
Lance turns to Judd. “Go on,”
he says.
“[Fire] was right. A lot of my research points
to the fact that the Triangle is some sort of doorway, or
portal.”
“To where?” asks Dana.
“To
somewhere else. Hell, another dimension...a place where we don't
belong. The place that this ship went to when it disappeared.”
“But
it came back, didn't it,” says Lance. He goes to get the
captain's log and opens it on the table. He asks Judd to help him
understand some of the entries. He starts with one in May. “I
don't know what this place is,” he reads. “We have no
radio, no navigation. I have no control over the ship. They have
slaughtered most of the crew and passengers, and the rest have simply
vanished. The children were the last to go,” he finishes,
thumping his finger on the page. “I read that twenty times,”
he says.
He takes up the log again: “Something is coming
for me...I can hear it outside the door.”
Cameraman
thinks it's a bit vague, all this “they” stuff and Lance
says he doesn't have details.
“There's something else,”
Judd says, preparing I'm sure to bring everyone down hard. “The
ship, it was on the other side for a long time.” Everyone kind
of looks at him like, And--? (Cameraman actually says it.) “Do
you know what a capacitor is?”
“Of
course,” says Lance.
“I think that the Corona
Queen,” Judd says, “has somehow, become a
capacitor—storing energy from the
other side.”
“You mean, like Evil,” says
Lance, looking like he's got a big headache right about now that
isn't getting better.
“We can call it whatever we want,
but there is an intelligence here,” Judd says, “and it's
an intelligence that has been locked on the other side for a very
long time, so now, we can no longer trust what we see or what we
hear. The ship is playing on our fears, it is creating things for us
to see. Now, one way or another we have to get off this ship, and
away from that line on the radar.”
Cameraman
is pretty thoroughly spooked. “Yeah, what is that thing, it is
a storm, or what?”
“Maybe the physical boundaries
between our world...and another. Maybe the physical boundaries of the
triangle itself.”
Cameraman basically gives the Hudson
speech, “That's it, man, game over, game over!” laced
with more colorful metaphors. Dana tries to snap him out of it. She
says they have to get the tapes. He has a rude suggestion for the
tapes, repeating that they have to get off the ship. Well, no one's
arguing with that.
Most everyone but Dana agrees with
Cameraman (Judd is silent, though) but Lance agrees that she can go
get the tapes, and “we'll all meet on deck. If the chopper's
there we fly, if it's not, we get in the boats.”
Judd
pops out into the hallway. “There's something I gotta do,”
he says. I'm sure they have a restroom on the helicopter, Judd! “Now,
you don't leave without me!” he insists.
Dana sends
Cameraman to the “playroom” (where the rocking horse was)
while she'll get the stuff in the mess hall. He goes to the playroom.
Oh, I hate to say it, Cameraman, but it was nice knowing you. I mean,
there's no way this can end in a good way for him, yes, no, maybe,
perhaps, yes?
We close in on Lance—he's got an
interesting face full of character, so closeups on him are cool—and
he starts singing something to himself while he goes to the bridge.
And he looks offscreen, and his eyes bulge open. And we see the radar
screen, and the big dark area is closing in fast.
Elsewhere,
Judd goes into room 418, where his ghostbusterometer went crazy
earlier, and where, no doubt, his parents were stationed lo those
many years ago. He pokes around and finds a wallet, and looks inside.
We don't get to see the name or picture on the driver's license.
We
cut to Cameraman in the playroom, being anxious. A quick cut of Dana
gathering things, while the monitor nearby is showing the cameras in
the playroom.
Then we're back to Judd, and he finds the
present that he tossed aside twenty-five years ago. He opens it, and
it's a very nice looking pocket knife, in a wooden case.
Dana
sits and sees the playroom monitors. “What the hell is he
doing?” she asks of no one.
In the playroom, Cameraman
decides to take a big ol' swig from his bottle. Bad move, as a
smiling white face appears on one of the monitors he's standing next
to. He sees the face. Of course, he turns around and there's nothing
there. He attributes this to equipment malfunction, and starts
whacking on it. He drops something, and bends to pick it up, and the
face reappears. He whips around again, and there's nothing
there.
Now, me, I would have been out of there while beating
the known top speed for human runners.
He just says a
personal remark about the situation. And when he turns to look at the
door, there's Someone there. He drops his bottle onto the floor, then
assumes that what he's looking at is Julie. He asks where she's
been.
In the mess hall, Dana happens to see him, and calls on
the walkie talkie to see who he's talking to.
The figure moves
closer to Cameraman, and we see that it is Julie...and, it
isn't. She does...something, with her head and her arms,
Cameraman pops out an expletive, and the monitor in the mess hall
goes to static. Dana rushes out of the room.
In the playroom,
“Julie” continues to wave her arms around Cameraman, and
his face gets cracked and pitted. She does one final wave, and he
explodes into dust.
Well!
Outside, the helicopter is
approaching the Corona Queen. Inside, both Dana and Judd reach the
playroom, but no sign of anyone is apparent. Dana calls Lance, who
says the chopper is on its way. The chopper calls and says there's
too much wind, he doesn't want to get caught in the rigging, the
three have to move aft. Since they repeated the conversation, I
figure I might as well too.
We have a quick shot of the
ominous clouds expanding, then...the rain is gone. A shot overhead
shows the clouds pulling back to the horizon, where the wall of dark
clouds waits. Then, suddenly, there's a roiling mass of brightly lit
clouds, that hurl themselves at the Corona Queen. This solidifies
(pretty impressively, I might add) into the solid looking black
clouds we saw way at the beginning.
And then...well, it
saddens me to report that the reach of the CGI and special effects
people exceeded their grasp. What we have are little flying animated
people, who are humanoid from the waist up, but tails of light from
the waste down. They...look, I'm really sorry guys, honestly. But
these creatures don't look at all real, or believable...or menacing
for that matter. What they look like most is a whole flock of
Tinkerbells. And they fly all around the ship, through the air,
looking like they're really anxious to grant a few wishes or
something.
Now, we see one of them, and it's a kind of scary
ghoul-thing, with red glowing eyes and a skull like face, and it's
wearing...a track suit, or something rather 70's looking. So aside
from the suit, it looks...er, okay. It looks okay. C +, fellas, can't
do better, sorry.
It turns, and sees Lance Henrikson, and
flies right at him, then surges through him.
He drops
his walkie talkie and looks like, well, like someone who just had a
ghost hurl through him, and says “Ohhh...baby.” He
collapses on deck.
Judd Nelson springs forward to try and
help, and also grab the walkie-talkie, and just then, Julie The Ghoul
floats up over the railing. She sort of looks at everyone, then sucks
Lance's soul out of his body (I'm guessing) and flies off. Judd and
Dana quickly make their way aft.
Judd contacts the chopper.
“Corona Queen to chopper!”
Chopper: “What
the hell is going on?”
Judd: “Do not leave without
us!”
Dana steps forward and...falls, though a rotten
place in the floor. Judd calls after her, then says he'll be down to
help her.
Down in this room, Dana sees the woman from her
earlier flashback, who shudders and groans. “Mom?” Dana
says, and moves toward her. Um, excuse me, but, er, Bad
Idea.
Judd is going through the corridors to get to her.
He grabs a rope, and lowers it through the hole. He calls to her,
unaware of the mother-daughter meeting below. Getting no response, he
throws the whole rope down the hole. Hey, that's not a good plan,
Judd.
Below, Dana says she never meant to hurt her mother,
but couldn't stand to see her in such pain. Mom, well, basically
groans and shivers like, er, a zombie, really. Dana goes to embrace
her.
Judd decides that if the rope isn't enough, he'll just
throw his whole damn self down the hole, and he does, just in time to
see this ghoul face over Dana's shoulder. Oddly enough, while clearly
a ghoul, the face doesn't look malevolent, and when Judd reaches
Dana, it's just her there. She confesses to killing her
mother.
“What you're seeing is not real,” Judd
says, and then he gets animated again. “Dana! Snap out of it!
We've gotta go!” She snaps out of it, grabs the tapes she
dropped, and they start heading back to the deck.
The pass
through the kitchen area again, and strung up everywhere are corpses
in various stages of rot and decay. “Oh my God, what is this,”
Dana says, while Judd hurries her along.
They run along a
corridor, and behind them, the shiny clean
corridor rapidly becomes rusted and decrepit. They come to a door,
but some zombie ghosts burst through it, so they figure to find a
better way. They rush through more corridors. They go down some
staircases, further into the plumbing as it were, past giant pipes
and ever closer quarters. They finally make it to a deck, and call
desperately to the chopper to lower the basket (the basket they came
to the ship in, if you'll recall.)
Up above, a hatchway opens
in the bottom of the helicopter, and the basket begins to descend.
They both jump into the basket when it reaches the deck, all the
while the ghost things are flying around, but, well, they kind of
look like they're flying because it's a fun time to be had, and not
because they're interested in eating souls. Just from this observer's
vantage point, naturally.
And the basket is brought on board,
as the Corona Queen vanishes back into the clouds, becoming rusty and
decrepit as she disappears. And the hatchway closes.
The
helicopter flies off into the rising sun, as the cloud begins to
collapse in on itself. And we fade to black.
And we fade in on
Dana, carrying a big box full of stuff, walking though the TV station
building. (They still need more lights, here.) She meets Bald Guy,
also carrying a big cardboard box full of stuff.
“Well,
well, well,” he says. “Congratulations. You got the story
of the century.”
“I don't know if it was worth the
deaths of five people,” she counters.
“Yeah, well,
welcome to television,” he says ruefully.
And he moves
on, and she continues to an office marked “Dana Elway,
Producer.” So, I guess she got Bald Guy's job? Who knows? Who
among us can really fathom the world that is television, in all its
myriad ways?
And cut to Judd Nelson, lounging in his chair.
He's listening to the tape he made at the beginning, where he was
talking about the Mary Celeste, only he's listening to the voice of
the man who interrupted him. The camera moves in as he replays the
conversation. Only this time, there's a difference—the last
line of the mysterious man in the shadows is, “But we have to
get on with our lives. Goodbye, son.” Judd replays this bit,
over and over.
And there's a knock at the door. It's Dana,
asking about how Judd's doing. He says he's doing fine, doing fine.
She says she's fine, fine as well. “It's been an interesting
couple of days,” she says. “Let's just say, I'm through
carrying guilt for something that wasn't my fault.” She looks
at him. “You ready?”
“Ready?” he asks,
slightly taken aback.
“Yeah.”
He gets this
hangdog look. “I forgot, didn't I.”
“Mr.
Roberts [Judd Nelson's character name, I think], you have a lot to
learn about dealing with women.” Pause. “Food is
critical.” Pause. “I know a great Chinese place about two
blocks from here.”
“Chinese is great,” he
says. “Let me just get my coat.”
As he does, the
phone rings. He looks...off, at the sound of it.
“You
need to get that?” she asks.
“Uh...we'll let the
machine pick it up,” he says, and strides to the door. They
leave, and the answering machine picks up. There's a kind of muffled
roar, and the camera swoops into the phone, through the circuit
boards, through the wires, into a bright light, and then into the
dark, solid, threatening clouds, still building over the waves of the
Bermuda Triangle.
And roll credits.
“Chinook and
Hero Wraiths by Deneven Imageworks” Uh...what?
They
used Newtek Lightwave and Adobe PhotoShop here, and Adobe
AfterEffects.
AT&T Broadband gets a Special Thanks, as do
lots of family members.
You know, I don't mind telling you,
this is a pretty good movie. I enjoyed this a lot, gobs of
atmosphere, good, solid storytelling, characters who are believable
and behave creditably, all the elements presented and parlayed...good
stuff.
It's really refreshing to see characters behave in
believable ways; even though they are putting themselves into
dangers, they don't know that. And Lance Henrikson
wanting to get everyone safely off, to heck with the money, is just
something I never expected. I just love the fact that everything
that happens has been set up, and pretty effortlessly.
The
sound and atmosphere are first rate throughout. In fact, almost all
the technical aspects are great.
Except one.
The worst
aspect was the little flying ghost people. CGI is hard to do right,
and easy to do wrong. And there seems to be a pervasive belief that
CGI can fix a number of ills, which I don't believe myself. These
creatures looked like something from a bad video game, and I was
frustrated because I couldn't shake the feeling I was supposed to
shoot them and rack up points. (Now there's something every DVD
remote control needs: a firing button.)
This film also shows
the virtues of using good, solid actors, and, even better, casting
your roles to fit. There are several scenes where Lance Henrikson's
character could be seen as craven, cowardly or weak, but because it's
Lance Fricken Henrikson, he comes across as just as strong-willed and
world-weary as ever.
The main downside, aside from those
ghost people, is that this is a very familiar movie. You
probably saw it a few years back when it was called Event Horizon.
Then, it was set on a spaceship but the plot was basically the same:
a vessel gone for decades is suddenly back, folks board it to try and
salvage it, and it destroys them one by one. Here, to give the film
its due, the story seems far more organic and focused, and less like
a skeleton on which to hang some showpiece scenes. Lost Voyage
gives us Judd Nelson, as a guy who is understandably both fascinated
and frightened of this stuff; his distance toward everyone comes from
the fact that he's here reluctantly. Event Horizon gave us Sam
Neill, who's a wonderful actor, but that film had him bouncing back
and forth between hero, depressed suffering
man, and evil incarnate. It was rather difficult to get a fix on
who he was, and how we should regard him. Event Horizon had the
bigger budget, but Lost Voyage used what it had with admirable
economy. Also, and points for this, Lost Voyage had a good ending.
This was my introduction to the work of director Christian
McIntire, and I originally intended it to be a short review; but the
sheer care he invests in his storytelling made a big impression on
me. It's not perfect by any means, but he seems to want to make
sure that the loose ends are at least acknowledged, if not wrapped
up. This is a refreshing contrast to many film-makers, who simply
want to trot out beloved or convenient cliches, to skip over
inconvenient lacunae, and to concentrate on what's rad and kewl, and
what will most impress the reviewers and/or get the job done
cheaply.
Recommended.
--October 27, 2004