Search - The Ferryman on DVD

So So

The Tao of Netflix | Washington, DC | 04/14/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"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."

Far from smooth sailing, but it gets you there in the end

Daniel Jolley | Shelby, North Carolina USA | 06/29/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"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."