That feeling of an extended commercial also pops up its large, jug-eared head in The Haunting of the Queen Mary, as the movie does exude the aura of an extended cinematic commercial for one of the diverse haunted-attraction experience tours that are given on the Long Beach-berthed tourist attraction that is the real Queen Mary, which, in 2008, Time magazine placed amongst its "Top 10 Haunted Places".
Whether or not The Haunting of the Queen Mary works better as a commercial than as a horror film might be open for discussion, but now, two years after its release, if we were to compare the movie to other haunted-ship movies we've seen and liked, this baby is put to shame by Alvin Rakoff's wonderfully tacky Death Ship (1980 / trailer) — who can forget its nonsensical development, or how Mrs. Morgan (Kate Reid [4 Nov 1930 – 27 Mar 1993] of The Andromeda Strain [1971 / trailer]) starts decomposed alive after eating some hard candy? — not to mention by Ghost Ship (2002 / trailer), with its breathtaking opening scene and/or, to go way further back, the almost ancient and far-more-creaky but narratively stronger Terror Aboard (1933 / full movie), a great-granddaddy of the bodycount film. In other words, while The Haunting of the Queen Mary ain't exactly terrible, there are better horror ships out there that: one, are not as much of a head-scratcher; and two, are far more scary (or at least suspenseful) most of the time.
Trailer to
The Haunting of the Queen Mary:
Which is a shame, for when The Haunting of the Queen Mary is on the mark — an endangered child at a swimming pool, a "madman" butchering people with an ax, the Golden Twenties-like lady playing the piano — some of the scenes are truly scary, and definitely punch hard. The problem is that not only do too many aspects of the story make no sense at all, the story is also hard to follow — all the more so since the movie involves two interconnected and crosscut narratives from different temporal periods. Worse, there are also flashbacks in both time frames, and so much info comes out only in drips and drops that one wonders what was lost in the cutting room. The Haunting of the Queen Mary truly deserts its narrative and leaves the viewer to put together too many puzzle pieces to truly enjoy the movie's often rather startling or attractive visuals. And when it comes to the eye-candy (if at times horrific) visuals of the movie, quiet often they are so cinematically pleasing that they undermine the film: the tale itself is never as strong, as convincing, or as interesting as much of what you see, and the good stuff you see only makes all the flick's faults more obvious.
A handsome traveling shot from the horizon into the troubled ship on Halloween night 1938, about two years after Queen Mary embarked on her maiden voyage in 1936, sets the tone of the movie: beautifully shot, the is-the-ship-sinking-? scene promptly does a flashback to earlier that very day. (To paraphrase Katy "Fruit Sister" Perry, the film changes its timeframe more often than a girl changes clothes.) We follow a family of three who sneak their way into the reservation-only first-class Halloween Party, to disastrous results, although the daughter Gwen (Florrie Wilkinson) does dance with [an unconvincing] Fred Astaire (Wesley Alfvin) and gets discovered by Hollywood. Unluckily, by the time she gets discovered, her war-disfigured daddy,* David Ratch (Will Coban of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword [2017]), is already possessed by the killer spirit of the man once welded under the ship's swimming pool* and, axe or surgical knife in hand, he has started to make short order of a number of people in a desperate attempt to finally get off the ship...
* Daddy's real face is one of the great shocks of the film, and easily reminds us of the horrors of war. As for the man under the pool, that is a riff on the legend of the man welded into the hull of the RMS Titanic — or was it the SS Great Eastern? Take your pick.
Meanwhile, in Timeline Two, the now of the 21st century, troubled couple Anne (Alice Eve of ATM [2012 / trailer] and Star Trek into Darkness [2013 / trailer]) and Patrick (Joel Fry of In the Earth [2021 / trailer], Cordelia [2019 / trailer], and Rock and Roll and Fuck'n'Lovely [2013 / trailer]) show up at the docked Queen Mary to pitch a possible tourist project to the oddly unnerving Lieutenant Gibson (Tim Downie). Patrick, the world's least-observant daddy, loses sight of their son Lukas (Lenny Rush, a 14-year-old playing an eight-year-old), but he shows up later, soaked to the bone...
So far, so good: both interludes offer moments of tension and horror, all of which has the added glean of director Gary Shore's* assured visual playfulness and fine but unflinching eye. Unluckily, the ghost story that follows is a tangled and untidy mess that seldom makes sense and leaves one wanting Cliff Notes and/or seriously considering the eject button. Now and then there is an inspired shock or even latently unnerving background scare, but much like Patrick and Anne seem to run around without rhyme or reason, the narrative doesn't really go anywhere. The viewer is left on the deck of confusion instead of enjoying what initially looks like it'll be thrilling sail into the nightmarish.
* Shore's biggest movie to date is undoubtedly his feature film directorial debut Dracula Untold (2014 / trailer), which could been a contender but blew it by putting stud-muffin Dominic "Preacher" Cooper in brown face.
The Haunting of Queen Mary is far more a well-made missed opportunity than an effective horror movie. Confusing and impenetrable, moments of true inspiration arise occasionally amidst all the thick mist of bewilderment, all liberally spiced with a rich sense of aesthetics and seductive visual glow. If only for its refined sense of visuals, and for its occasionally truly bloody deaths, the movie is not a complete loss. But people who want a story to their refined cinematic style might want to give The Haunting of Queen Mary a wide berth.
No comments:
Post a Comment