THE FERRYMAN (2007)

The Ferryman (2007)

Actors: John Rhys-Davies, Kerry Fox, Sally Stockwell, Amber Sainsbury, Tamer Hassan
Directors: Chris Graham (VII)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Region: 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number of discs: 1
DVD Release Date: September 25, 2007
Run Time: 100 minutes

Movie: * *
Discs: * * ½

In this New Zealand horror movie a group of tourists on a yachting holiday responds to a distress signal (something which you must never do when you are a character in horror movie) and rescues an old Greek man (John Rhys-Davies, best known as Indiana Jones’ movie sidekick) from a deserted fishing trawler. But all isn’t as it seems: the Greek has been using a supernaturally-powered knife to cheat death for centuries now. Every time he stabs someone with the knife, he exchanges bodies with that person. Handy for when you’re old and dying in an old age home and the young hospital staff treat you like crap, that . . .

Pretty soon the tourists are engaged in a life-and-death struggle. The ferryman — who in ancient Greek mythology ferried dead souls to the land of the dead — is however real and hot on the Greek’s trail . . . but who will survive, and who won’t?

Well, the odds on the dumb as bricks flirtatious blonde is pretty much zero — hope we didn’t spoil anything there. Luckily the titular Ferryman isn’t some kind of mysterious slasher in this movie, and while the body-jumping villain idea isn’t particular new or fresh either it makes for a minor change of pace. Still, the concept could have gotten a better treatment than it does here though: the movie is rarely scary and often over-the-top hysterical.

Still, the effects (though not of the ferryman himself) are okay for a small budget feature such as this and despite all the histrionics the acting isn’t that bad. Still, some weird directorial choices such as too many musical montage sequences and an uneventful first forty minutes, er, threaten to sink the whole affair. Nothing much is made of the plot scenario’s philosophical dilemma though: would you kill a complete stranger to cheat death yourself?