The Ferryman – DVD Review

Film, Reviews

Available at Amazon.com

First Look Home Entertainment presents The Ferryman. Written by Nick Ward and Matthew Metcalfe. Based on a story by Jesse Warn. 100 minutes. Rated R for brutal horror violence, language, some sexuality and drug use.

Directed By:

Chris Graham

Cast:

John Rhys-Davies. The Greek
Kerry Fox. Suze
Sally Stockwell. Tate
Amber Sainsbury. Kathy
Tamer Hassan. Big Dave
Craig Hall. Chris Hamilton

The Film:

John Rhys-Davies is best known for his role as the lovable Sallah from the Indiana Jones films. So it’s rather shocking when in the first scene he chops a man up into little pieces, washes himself in the man’s blood, then throws the body parts over board. The Greek, his role in this film, is not the lovable John Rhys Davies we know.

As the film begins it seems to have some potential. Rhys-Davies plays a character who’s been escaping death for a long time. He has this special knife he uses to transfer his mind into a young fresh body. Enter a group of tourists out for an enjoyable vacation. They stumble upon a boat that The Greek is on. Thinking he’s in trouble they take him aboard. Not long after, he’s shoving his special knife into one of the men on board taking his body. But his actions are very suspicious so he decides he needs another body. Soon he’s jumping from one body to another for apparently no discernible reason. All while he’s creating chaos on the boat he’s worried that Death is growing closer and wants nothing more than to get away. So I don’t really see how killing all the people on the boat, including those who know how to steer it, will help him escape. But most the things that happen in this don’t really make any sense so maybe that’s what the filmmakers were going for. However I seriously doubt it.

Like I said, the film had potential. The acting is pretty decent and for a low budget horror film the production value is very nice. The film looks good. However as the story unfolds more and more problems begin to appear and the whole think collapses in on itself into an unwatchable mess. It’s kind of amazing to watch how terrible this film gets, especially towards the end. Even the acting seems to just get worse and by the end it becomes laughable.

About the only thing holding this film together is the charismatic performance from John Rhys-Davies, but sadly his screen time is not as long as you’d hope it would be. And it is certainly not enough to keep this shipwreck of a film from sinking into the murky depths where it belongs.

The DVD:

This film is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and 2.0 surround. It includes Spanish and English Subtitles.

Extras:

Well, unless you count Spanish subtitles and close captioned as special features like the packaging does, then no, this DVD has zero extras.

The DVD Lounge’s Ratings for The Ferryman
CATEGORY
RATING
(OUT OF 10)
THE MOVIE

3
THE VIDEO

7
THE AUDIO

7
THE EXTRAS

0
REPLAY VALUE

0
OVERALL
2
(NOT AN AVERAGE)

The Inside Pulse
This is a pretty worthless film. It doesn’t offer anything interesting or new to the horror genre. I suppose if you’re a rabid John Rhys-Davies fan you’ll want to rent it, but there is no way anyone is going to want to watch this more than once.

Mike Noyes received his Masters Degree in Film from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. A few of his short films can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mikebnoyes. He recently published his first novel which you can buy here: https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Days-Years-Mike-Noyes-ebook/dp/B07D48NT6B/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528774538&sr=8-1&keywords=seven+days+seven+years