Film Project Genre Research - Ghost Ship (2002)

The opening of Ghost Ship is calm and delightful, until the murder. The shot opens with a pink title and an establishing shot of the suspected Ghost Ship. The credits of the movie continue to in the big pink font. An Italian lounge singer is preforming "Senza Fine" in front of a party. The captain of the boat offers a little girl to dance, then the camera cuts to an unknown hand pulling a lever. The lever is to a wire on a spool that starts to spin very fast. The wire becomes taut, snaps across the crowd, and cuts everyone on the dance floor (except for the little girl).

The opening scene sets up the death of the passengers that will later haunt the ship that is salvaged. The ghosts in the film are vengeful and torment the crew that finds the ship, but this isn't the initially set up in the opening scene.

As stated before, the movie opens with a pink title card and an aerial establishing shot of the ship that fades into a shot that pans the party that is happening on the deck. The scene continues to use fades in between shots to convey a calm feeling while the singer starts their vocals. The rest of the scene that happens before the murder is a continuation of fading in and out of the singer, band, party-goers, and the little girl dancing with the captain. These shots give the audience a false sense of security because of the genre of the movie. This is a common opening to horror movies, the lull into a calming scene, then a specific action that sets the rest of the movies terrifying events on course. A little more than halfway through the scene see a random man's arm pull a level that is a good example of framing and building suspense. The audience doesn't know who the murder is which builds suspense from the beginning of the film. The framing in this scene is a good example of the rule of thirds as the lever takes up roughly 2/3 of the screen as it is the focus. As the spool pulls start to pull the wire, the singer's music starts to distort and becomes creepy as the audience realizes the impending doom that the party-goers are about to endure.

Budget: $20 million ($28.5 million today)
Box Office: $68.3 million ($97.4 million today)
Awards/Nominations: None