The Ferryman (2007)

continued...

... scenario, and even though you might feel a tad claustrophobic at times by watching so closely, Graham once again uses the fog to make it seem as if the deck of the ship is endless in length.

Chris Graham also does an amazing job using the soundtrack of this film as an additive to its overall presentation. The style points (mostly slow motion in foggy settings) are welcomed to the feature. Toward the end of the film, and certainly during a brutal fight between two of our main characters, as the soundtrack booms and the camera effects begin to shine through, you'd swear that Guy Ritchie or other comparable company suddenly filched hold of the camera and crew. The visualizations manage to come across surprisingly fresh, and in The Ferryman these style points are sparse but welcomed. This kind of eye candy will really inspire you to keep your eyes out for this director. He might just have something else just as nifty up his sleeve!

Towards the beginning and end of the film, when the actual story behind The Ferryman and his haunting tale begin to unfold, the film tends to stumble a bit with what is actually the entire back story behind all the reasons to why our characters were ever in this predicament to begin with. We'll all hear the stories at sea that deal with sunken treasure and ghost pirates but nothing is as incredibly lame as the basis behind this particular film. You'd be better off with making the tooth fairly an evil spirit. It would....er, did...make a much more interesting premise than this tacked on tale. Luckily, Graham does a fantastic job at making everything else in the film seem very fresh. Throughout the middle of the movie you'll completely forget as to why the demon is shifting bodies to begin with. You'll be too caught up in everything else that's going on in front of you. It is quite the ride! I just wished they used ghost pirates instead!

I was quite surprised by The Ferryman. The gore is all done very well and the lighting effects are simply fantastic. Once you hit the halfway point of the film it's all very much like one giant roller coaster ride and in the end, when yet another curve ball in the form of irony is thrown, you'll realize that this film really does a remarkable job at taking a simple possession plot one step further. It is by far one of the most entertaining and frightening films to set sail at seal. Recommended.

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