The year is 1981 and a Russian merchant vessel has just narrowly averted a collision with a British submarine. The Russian captain is not the only one to be completely stunned by the incident, since the submarine dates back to World War II. It was believed "lost with all hands", but for one survivor found floating in the Baltic Sea and picked up by the Nazis. Firmly decided to clear up the mystery, British naval intelligence contacts the sole survivor, by now a grey-haired professor of mature years...
For a television mini-mini-series, "Ghostboat" seems to have enjoyed an enviable production budget. The premise is quite promising - and quite spooky. The execution does not live up to the premise, although it does have its moments, mainly thanks to some fine acting performances. The whole might have worked better if we, the viewers, had been introduced more closely to the life and times of the submarine crew anno 1943, complete with a description of the captain's nature and ambitions. Sadly the viewer learns little about these men, meaning that the question of their ultimate fate (or possibly ultimate fates, plural) becomes less than riveting. Moreover, it is never entirely clear just what we're dealing with. Are we talking about time travel, about some kind of possession or spectral influence, about people going stir-crazy and/or about a submarine having a will - an evil will - of its own ?
Anyway, in its own way "Ghostboat" is a comment on the troubled nature of 20th-century global politics, what with a hot war cooling not into peace but into a cold war. In the mini-series, the new submarine crew transitions nearly seamlessly into the old, with officers and engineers from 1981 talking about sticking it to the Krauts and the Jerries ; one rather gets that the opposite process would have worked just as well, with people from 1943 becoming hell-bent on driving a Breznjev or an Andropov from the Kremlin... And of course "Ghostboat" offers an interpretation of an age-old horror/fantasy theme, to wit a weapon that wants, nay needs to be used, and coerces its wielder into violence.
For a television mini-mini-series, "Ghostboat" seems to have enjoyed an enviable production budget. The premise is quite promising - and quite spooky. The execution does not live up to the premise, although it does have its moments, mainly thanks to some fine acting performances. The whole might have worked better if we, the viewers, had been introduced more closely to the life and times of the submarine crew anno 1943, complete with a description of the captain's nature and ambitions. Sadly the viewer learns little about these men, meaning that the question of their ultimate fate (or possibly ultimate fates, plural) becomes less than riveting. Moreover, it is never entirely clear just what we're dealing with. Are we talking about time travel, about some kind of possession or spectral influence, about people going stir-crazy and/or about a submarine having a will - an evil will - of its own ?
Anyway, in its own way "Ghostboat" is a comment on the troubled nature of 20th-century global politics, what with a hot war cooling not into peace but into a cold war. In the mini-series, the new submarine crew transitions nearly seamlessly into the old, with officers and engineers from 1981 talking about sticking it to the Krauts and the Jerries ; one rather gets that the opposite process would have worked just as well, with people from 1943 becoming hell-bent on driving a Breznjev or an Andropov from the Kremlin... And of course "Ghostboat" offers an interpretation of an age-old horror/fantasy theme, to wit a weapon that wants, nay needs to be used, and coerces its wielder into violence.