DVD Artwork
Ghostboat is a made for TV supernatural/cold war/WW2/thriller type of affair from the UK that is set in 1981, in the midst of the Cold War. An English submarine, the HMS Scorpion, thought sunk and lost to the world in 1943, turns up in the Balkan Sea nearly forty years later. There doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with it; no wear or tear, no signs of an attack on it, but where the Hell has it been?
Naval Intelligence hunt down Professor Jack Hardy, who was the only survivor when the Scorpion, only to find out that he has no memory of what happened, and more importantly has no interest in helping out. Well, obviously he does eventually agree to help them, if only to try and exorcise the ghosts of the past, whatever they may be. naval Intelligence want to retrace the ships logs and follow its last mission to the last detail in order to try and find out what happened to the boat and its crew.
Ghostboat starts off predictably enough but does manage to invoke a certain element of tension as it progresses through its two hour plus running time (it screened it two parts). The tensions mount as strange happenings occur, Hardy seems to have flashbacks of the old crew and very slowly the boat and its present crew seem to be reverting back to the 1940′s. It is quite effectively done, and I must say that the story had me gripped; I was interested to see what the heck was going to happen, or had happened before the boat sunk. Alas that for me was the downfall of the story. It does build up the tension quite nicely as WW2 replays on the boat, but the outside world is still very much weighted in the 1980′s where tensions were running high. However, the conclusion to the movie was very poor; don’t go expecting any real answers because you won’t get any.
What you will get though is some good acting, especially from the ever reliable David Jason, some not so bad special effects and a very nice but subtle transition back to WWII on the Scorpion.
I’m not the biggest fan of TV mini-series from the UK, I grew up there and have watched my fair share, however this is something I would have tuned into. David Jason always puts in a solid performance, and he does here too, but the rest of the cast shine alongside him. Ghostboat is flawed in the fact the writer, basing his script on a novel, didn’t really know how to conclude events so I was left feeling a little letdown. However, as a conspiracy style story it does work well enough and passes a couple of hours quite effortlessly. Shame they couldn’t find any extras whatsoever to slap on this release though.
