Dream Cruise (2007)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

To me, this episode was pretty freaky, but I think it's more to my fear of an open sea than to the quality of the film itself. The story isn't bad, but it doesn't bring anything new. Not only is the ghost practically copied from "The Ring", but the a complete plot is already seen more than once. However, the realization and acting are at a decent level, the film is tense and holds attention, and there are also a few quite interesting and terrifying scenes.6/10

Takashi Miike's contribution to the Masters of Horror's first season was one of the absolute greatest episodes of the entire show. With his uniquely shocking style, Miike delivered a nightmarish tale that was practically impossible to categorize. The second season contains another short film directed by an Asian "master" (although this term is debatable, since Norio Tsuruta's only did the mediocre "Premonition" and one of the "Ringu" sequels thus far), but this time the result is mundane and very easy to categorize. "Dream Cruise" is typical & derivative J-Horror, so unfortunately you already know what to expect: a clichéd plot about ghosts from the past, vengeance from beyond the grave and ghastly appearances that disappear again as quick as the come. "Dream Cruise" is a crossover between "Dead Calm", albeit just regarding the setting and line-up of characters, and the original "Ringu", from which this story shamelessly borrows all the main aspects and even some of the most essential frights & make-up effects. The American attorney Jack Miller has been working in Japan since two years and he even managed to secretly steal the beautiful wife away from his general manager. The latter found out about their relationship, however, and plots to get rid of them both during a touristy cruise on his yacht. Jack accepts the invitation reluctantly, because he's terrified of the sea due to a childhood trauma, but Eiji's diabolical plan doesn't really go as planned, neither, because he as well faces an unexpected ghost from the past. The script direly moves from one clichéd situation to the next and the three main characters are genuine stereotypes whose every next move and line of text you can predict light-years in advance. The supposedly surprising ending is terribly irritating, too, and people who're familiar with ghost stories are able to guess the outcome since the opening sequence already. The make-up effects on the watery ghosts would be creepy and unsettling, if it hadn't been for the fact we already seen similar stuff in "Ringu", "Ju-On: The Grudge", "Phone", etc… "Dream Cruise" is undoubtedly the worst entry in season two and my personal vote for the most lackluster one of the entire show.

J-Horror's career can be summed up by the audience's potential fright at being confronted by the righteously malcontent spirits attempting to breach their world for ours. However, visions of decrepit, deformed stringy-haired Asian women slowly reaching out to take our lives is no longer anything haunting because of their ubiquity in the early 2000's. Therefore, it'll have to take a memorable narrative twist, or unique emotional characterizations to be affected by their work. Neither are found in this exercise because of the director's erratic tendency to play temporal puppetmaster whenever he sees fit. The lack of faith I placed on the director's control of what is dream/what is reality led my mind astray and distracted me from the strengths of the singular setting. You get bits and pieces of the three main characters lives...but nothing sincere enough to create a lasting impression. Also, I found Ryo Ishibashi's acting to be cheap and second-rate though his character's breakdown is less involving and more two-dimensional than the other two leads. The film-making and the eerie green colors reflecting the malevolent spirit is fine...but the storytelling's too shoddy and incomplete to matter. An addition of western/genre plot reveals would have added more pleasure to this experience.

this one had some decent parts...the first appearance of the ghost woman and the way she moved up until she disappears was creepy as hell, for example. this story could have been 15-20 minutes long, though. it just goes on and on and on. it gets to the point that it's annoying how clumsily paced it is. the final "payoff" at the end isn't even good enough to sit through this entire episode to see. i only forced myself to get through it so that i didn't have to watch it again. this was probably my least favorite episode of the second season. this is really saying something, too, because the second season had some weaker episodes.