An excerpt from my script review for Chimera (aka Ghost Ship) which will be available 09/23/24:
2.) Plot Stability
My thoughts and feelings have been mentioned on this site before, so apologies if you’re rereading them for the umpteenth time.
For me, “good” horror originates from the Stephen King line…
“The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn’t real. I know that, and I also know that if I’m careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”
This reminds me of when I read The Shining, particularly when Danny goes outside to play on the playground during the winter.
Setting aside the topiaries that seem to follow him with their gazes, I’m thinking more about how he sits in the cement tube that, for some reason, was considered “fun” on playgrounds when we were kids.
In this scene from the novel he’s inside one end, with the far end being buried in snow creating an uneasy darkness. It’s in there that he feels a sense of evil, which to me is more terrifying than any jump scare or seeing something.
There’s a looming sense of doom that we can’t put our fingers on, but know that it’s there waiting for us.
This scene affected me so much that during one of my part time gigs, loading and unloading passenger airplanes, there were times in the early mornings that the back of the bin would be dark.
If by myself in there, my mind would begin to play tricks and I could “feel” that sense of dread or unrest that Danny surely felt on the playground inside that simple tube.
That’s what this version of the Ghost Ship story presented, an unnatural and unsettling ghost story that wasn’t as in your face as the version we were given onscreen.
Gone is the initial “killing” scene that is in the final product, and instead we jump right into the salvage crew on a mission gone wrong as they tow a leaky vessel.
This allows us to get to the mysterious ship even earlier, now on page 12.
Getting to the action sooner is always better, but my question was how did they stumble upon the vessel?
In the final version from last week, Jack gives them the approximate whereabouts of the vessel, but here were they just randomly sailing around the northern Pacific? They admit that the ship isn’t on any chartered shipping lanes, so what were they after initially?
It didn’t feel like a very profitable business plan, as the ocean is a very big place with a lot of open spaces.
(Almost as bad as randomly rocketing through outer space hoping to come across another ship or unknown planet.)
Anyway, we’re to the ship earlier, and the promise of the big payday is still there, only this time they call the Coast Guard to radio their intentions.
This works because it makes perfect sense. I get the apprehension once they discover the gold, not wanting to alert “undesirables” who may be floating by, but going by the books makes sense initially since it’s what they’d have to do to make a valid claim and not get screwed later.
But once they start setting the Chimera up to be towed…
It’s almost as if it doesn’t want to be taken, because everything seems to go wrong for the crew.
Try to tie it up? Cables almost kill people.
Get it tied up? The engines eventually blow up.
Once fixed, they then catch on fire.
It all feels very ominous for the characters, which is good, but in the back of our minds we’re wondering if one of them isn’t purposefully sabotaging things.
Oh, and the gold and Ferrari are still there, the latter which is quickly forgotten and the former they all divide evenly.
This is our main driver…getting the gold off the ship.
It’s here that the early draft diverts from the final product.
We’re given more ambiguous “supernatural”.
A shrieking from inside the ship, which is almost unexplainable, but the crew shrugs it off as an old ship and temperatures evening out below deck.
Mysterious figures watching Epps from afar. Are they ghosts? Her crewmates conspiring against her?
We don’t know and that’s good.
Tense booming in the bowels of the ship that reveal “newer” bodies that were impaled below. Were’ they after the gold too? Will Epps and Co. share the same fates?
A creepy voice over the radios, that no one knows and seems to precede bad tidings for the crew members.
As if all this wasn’t enough, the radio gets busted mysteriously at night, leading to tension among the crew, and then the salvage ship burns down and sinks entirely.
Now our crew is left on the “ghost ship” known as the Chimera and left to both human nature and the supernatural.
Want EARLY access to our videos, uploads, and movie/script reviews? Members get them FIRST! Follow this link to our Discussion Forum.
