Customer Reviews

The Ferryman

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm surprised more horror movies haven't tapped into the legendary Ferryman story. This one doesn't take place on the river Styx but in the Pacific.
THE FERRYMAN is heavy on atmospheric mysticism and has a few disturbing scenes, and for a film of its genre, it's decent enough. The story focuses on some kind of spirit that has eluded the Ferryman for years by using a magic knife that allows him to jump from body to body. SLIDERS and INDIANA JONES' John Rhys Davies plays the first spirit who then manages to take over six more bodies from three couples on a cruise to Fiji. I also wish they would have used Chris DeBurgh's original DON'T PAY THE FERRYMAN instead of the horrible remake. But it's a decent horror film for fans.

Make that short on acting skills as well.

The Ferryman is nothing short of an *extremely* underwhelming film. The entire first half is basically nothing but a big party on a boat containing unimportant and totally useless conversations between all the characters.

I've been disappointed by horror flicks before, but at least even the worst ones offer *something* interesting from time to time.

I can't recommend the Ferryman to anyone except the most dedicated of fans who admire scary storylines involving ships and oceans. Just a total disappointment. Even Ghost Ship was better than this.

It's always good to make sure the seller and product are kept apart, so that reviewing one does not affect the other. In this case the seller was prompt, logical, and delivered quickly, one of the reasons to buy here, but the movie was mostly interesting, some fairly good effects, and had a huge, central to the story flaw in the how and why of the title character's actions within the film. Down Under horror, interesting, but with a major flaw in thinking it through before they shot.

Six people go sailing on a boat, find Jon Rhys-Davies, and then start dying. I love Mr. Rhys-Davies, but lately his name on a film hasn't been an indication of quality. Surprisingly, The Ferryman actually delivers.

The Ferryman is about a body-hopping sorcerer who wields an enchantedknife. Whomever he stabs with the knife swaps bodies with him. We start in media res with the final two inhabitants of another voyage battling each other to death, before only the Greek (Rhys-Davies) is left. Of course, our six victims pick him up.

There's not a lot of room on the boat to maneuver, but The Ferryman works with its limited set. The Ferryman is thick with accents (it was filmed in Australia) and some cultural nuances may be lost on American audience (references to the Maori). Because there's not much to do on the boat, there's actually quite a bit of dialogue between the various victims. The conflicts take place primarily between genders, as the couples' relationships are strained by the intrusion of an ancient sorcerer who happens to enjoy women.

The movie hinges on two actresses: hot blonde Sally Stockwell (Tate) and cute brunette Amber Sainsbury (Kathy). Kathy gets some supernatural help in visions of a dead little girl she was unable to save in her past life as a nurse. That deus ex machina gives Kathy the knowledge she needs to defeat the possessed Tate: an obloi, the Greek coin to pay Charon so that he may ferry the dead across the river Styx.

An undercurrent of sexual tension crackles throughout The Ferryman. The sorcerer's taste in women is persistent regardless of gender and he isn't above manipulating the various attractive females into compromising positions. Even the climactic battle at the end involves a lesbian kiss.

The Ferryman's characters aren't particularly fleshed out. It's not hard to guess that the blonde in the slinky dress is going to be the center of attention or that the ex-nurse has a secret. It's elevated somewhat by the ending, which takes events to their logical if somewhat nihilistic conclusion.

This movie is freaky and scary. The first time I saw it was on the Sy-Fy channel and missed a lot of it, so I got it from Netflix. I wish they would make more like this movie, because I love anything dealing with Greek Mythology and that's what this movie does.

Good for a rental only. I tend to love horror movies involving water/boats, but this was a letdown. It kept my attention, but the characters and story were just not that interesting or engaging. The story concept is very old - a spirit bouncing through bodies.

I have to admit that The Ferryman wasn't nearly as bad a movie as I was expecting - at least it didn't suck my will to live out of my body as I watched it. Leaving aside the whole supernatural aspect of the story, though, the film does have a significant problem in terms of the silly direction Chris Graham (the director) allowed things to take in the final half hour. Letting a person steal another person's body by stabbing them to death with an ancient knife is bad enough, but having both parties flop around like fish out of water for upwards of a minute as the body transfer takes place just opens the floodgates of laughter and ridicule. There's also no way to rationalize one crucial aspect of the film's most climactic scene. All hope is not necessarily lost, though, as the writers and director redeem themselves somewhat with an ending that invites failure but ends up working quite well (and I'm not just saying that because one of the actresses suddenly becomes about ten times as attractive as she had already been up to that point).

If you've ever wondered what happened to Charon, this movie has the answer: apparently, he's been tooling around the South Pacific for a couple of thousand years trying to track down a customer who got off without paying him. That kind of stick-to-itiveness is probably what got him promoted up to head Ferryman back in the day, so let know one question this old timer's job commitment - especially when there are so many other things about this storyline to question, from the whole "body transfer knife" to the deus ex machina in little girl's clothing. We're never told anything about the knife's origins, nor do we know where Charon's unpaying customer found it. All we know is that our main characters' fancy yacht trip turns out to be an unmitigated disaster, even before a dense fog rolls in and the crew picks up a stranded sailor (John Rhys-Davies). Even though this guy has been stranded out in the middle of the ocean for who knows how long, Charon is suddenly hot on his trail once he sets foot on the Dionysus (that's the name of the yacht). In other words, it doesn't take our bad guy long to start switching bodies.

If you love animals as passionately as I do, be warned that this cinematic voyage will not be smooth sailing. One fairly lengthy section of the film is particularly hard to sit through. The stereotypical blonde, self-absorbed, high maintenance female character also may not sit well with feminists. Here's what really bothers me about this film, though. John Rhys-Davies' character has a huge tattoo on his back, and that tattoo stays with him as he moves from one body to another. Sure, its figure of a snake representing infinity, but we all know the director put that bloody huge tattoo there because he thinks at least some in his audience are too stupid to figure out the dumb body transfer plot point on their own. That's really subtle, Mr. Director.

Despite all of its problems, though, The Ferryman is still a halfway decent horror film. It never rises to the occasion of generating any suspense (especially since we always know whose body the bad guy happens to be inhabiting), and things get pretty darn silly toward the end, but it does serve up a reasonable amount of blood and a much better ending than you would ever expect from a film such as this.

I have seen worse. Not much worse, but worse. I have to say that I was disappointed with the lack of screen time given Charon, the fabled Ferryman of the dead. The movie does a fair job of establishing the mood after a strange opening sequence. Once the film starts progressing after John Rhys-Davies' character comes aboard, the plot unravels and never regains its bearings.

The horror , or supernatural genre has one thing I hate. Catchy ideas with crummy stories and many times even worse actors. Besides Davies the cast of this flick look like casting rejects from Reaper, which already has a cast of rejects (besides the devil of course:)

Anyhow as I stated above most movies have cool and catchy ideas and this one is that way as well. The problem is that we do not get enough of this story and then it is basically told through the ranting spirit of this dead girl that not only shows up just to seemingly have a cliched "save our heroine" role, but also gives the heroine the very thing she needs to stop the spirit. How this came about is what you will pay for if you rent this dustbin gem. As for me I hope to see this idea put together by people who actually know good story telling.

One last note. Whoever put together the soundtrack for this should be beaten until they can no longer hear. People humming opera classics would be better than the garbage on this movie.

Really, that's the only title I could think of for this film. Cruelty to animals is not cool and this movie has one of the most sadistic scenes of animal cruelty in recent memory. The scene is implied as you don't actually see the guy breaking the dogs back but you see the aftermath and get to then listen to the poor creature whining in pain for the next 10 minutes before it's finally thrown overboard a ship. That is supposed to be entertainment? Sick is what that is.

The acting is terrible, with one particular character played by some blond chick who is quite possibly the most annoying character I have ever seen in a movie, any movie. Her incessant bitching, complaining, crying, and nagging is made all the worse by her nails on a chalkboard voice. The rest of the cast is forgettable, but to their defense they had absolutely nothing to work with. This movie probably could have made Al Pacino look bad.

Lastly, how do you go from being a main character in the Lord of The Rings Trilogy, arguably the best fantasy films ever made, to this direct to video garbage? Mr Rhys-Davies did you really need a paycheck that badly?