Twenty years ago today, Ghost Ship sailed into theaters and unleashed an unforgettable opening sequence that instantly entered the annals of all-time great cold opens. The stylish introduction ends with an unexpected shock and an insanely high body count. Perhaps it was a bit too effective; that high kill count quickly slows down once Ghost Ship jumps ahead to the present.
No matter the film that followed, this cold open deserves its place among horror’s best opening sequences.
The Steve Beck-directed horror movie was the third release under the genre label Dark Castle Entertainment and his sophomore feature follow-up to 2001’s Th13teen Ghosts. Released in theaters on October 25, 2002, Ghost Ship followed a salvage crew seeking riches from a long-missing Italian cruise ship, the MS Antonia Graza, only to discover its haunted past shortly after boarding.
The cold open teases some harrowing events that led to the ocean liner’s disappearance forty years ago. Soothing ballroom music plays against pink cursive credits and bubbles rising from the ocean’s depths. The title card set over a wide shot of the MS Antonia Graza to orchestral music feels more at home with a retro sitcom or romance than a horror movie.
What quickly follows is a romantic ballroom scene set on a luxurious cruise ship in 1962. Singer Francesca (Francesca Rettondini) croons “Senza Fine” to a bustling open-air ballroom. It’s a picture of opulence as the crew maneuvers through the dance floor to the tables beyond with trays of wine or carts of fine dining offerings. The exception to the elegant revelry is a bored wallflower, young Katie (Emily Browning), who relays her boredom to a kind crew member.
Eventually, Francesca summons everyone to the dance floor, and the ship’s Captain (Bob Ruggiero) attempts to entertain Katie with an invitation to dance. An unseen figure pushes a lever, setting in motion a series of motors and cranks that wind up excess wires piled on the deck floor. The wire rips through the unsuspecting crowd like butter.
Beck slows everything down just before the coiling wire bisects the patrons. The camera lingers over smiling faces, capturing the final moments of ignorant bliss. The camera pans between various mechanical components in play, a harbinger of doom that creates tension. Like a rubber band, the slow speed whips into a fast frenzy, the wire now moving with a force that slices through bouquets, metals, and bone with ease. The crowd barely has time to register the shattering glass or exploding lights before it hits them.
The camera gives one last pause, this time of a now bloodied wire, before scanning back through shocked faces. Still gripping her dance partner tight, Katie looks on in horror as bodies begin to fall around her in pieces. Arms, lower torsos, and heads slide away to a blood-slicked dance floor. Some writhe around, reaching for their missing limbs as they die. Katie’s scream echoes into the night.
Its jarring shift from romantic elegance to entrails-filled horror makes this sequence stand out—the slow, methodical build of presenting mood and setting before literally ripping it away. The abrupt shifts in pacing, from slow to fast to slow again, create foreboding and suspense, and allows the horror to really sink in when Beck examines the wire’s deadly aftermath.
Of course, the ability to kill so many in one fell swoop contributes to the feeling of shock. The imagery of a young girl standing at the center of a massive pile of bisected corpses leaves a lasting imprint. When cold opens in horror usually results in a death or two, Ghost Ship ambitiously dispatches an entire ballroom worth of patrons and crew all at once.
The answers to the mystery behind this gruesome act of violence never quite matched the adrenaline-inducing highs of this opening scene. Even still, it’s such a memorable moment in horror that it’s worth the price of taking a cruise on the Ghost Ship alone.
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