1/5 Attrocious!
  by YJM (Somewhere In The South)
Really, that's the only title I could think of for this film. Cruelty to animals is not cool and this movie has one of the most sadistic scenes of animal cruelty in recent memory. The scene is implied as you don't actually see the guy breaking the dogs back but you see the aftermath and get to then listen to the poor creature whining in pain for the next 10 minutes before it's finally thrown overboard a ship. That is supposed to be entertainment? Sick is what that is.

The acting is terrible, with one particular character played by some blond chick who is quite possibly the most annoying character I have ever seen in a movie, any movie. Her incessant bitching, complaining, crying, and nagging is made all the worse by her nails on a chalkboard voice. The rest of the cast is forgettable, but to their defense they had absolutely nothing to work with. This movie probably could have made Al Pacino look bad.

Lastly, how do you go from being a main character in the Lord of The Rings Trilogy, arguably the best fantasy films ever made, to this direct to video garbage? Mr Rhys-Davies did you really need a paycheck that badly?

2/5 So So
  by The Tao of Netflix (Washington, DC)
Good for a rental only. I tend to love horror movies involving water/boats, but this was a letdown. It kept my attention, but the characters and story were just not that interesting or engaging. The story concept is very old - a spirit bouncing through bodies.

3/5 Far from smooth sailing, but it gets you there in the end
  by Daniel Jolley (Shelby, North Carolina USA)
I have to admit that The Ferryman wasn't nearly as bad a movie as I was expecting - at least it didn't suck my will to live out of my body as I watched it. Leaving aside the whole supernatural aspect of the story, though, the film does have a significant problem in terms of the silly direction Chris Graham (the director) allowed things to take in the final half hour. Letting a person steal another person's body by stabbing them to death with an ancient knife is bad enough, but having both parties flop around like fish out of water for upwards of a minute as the body transfer takes place just opens the floodgates of laughter and ridicule. There's also no way to rationalize one crucial aspect of the film's most climactic scene. All hope is not necessarily lost, though, as the writers and director redeem themselves somewhat with an ending that invites failure but ends up working quite well (and I'm not just saying that because one of the actresses suddenly becomes about ten times as attractive as she had already been up to that point).

If you've ever wondered what happened to Charon, this movie has the answer: apparently, he's been tooling around the South Pacific for a couple of thousand years trying to track down a customer who got off without paying him. That kind of stick-to-itiveness is probably what got him promoted up to head Ferryman back in the day, so let know one question this old timer's job commitment - especially when there are so many other things about this storyline to question, from the whole "body transfer knife" to the deus ex machina in little girl's clothing. We're never told anything about the knife's origins, nor do we know where Charon's unpaying customer found it. All we know is that our main characters' fancy yacht trip turns out to be an unmitigated disaster, even before a dense fog rolls in and the crew picks up a stranded sailor (John Rhys-Davies). Even though this guy has been stranded out in the middle of the ocean for who knows how long, Charon is suddenly hot on his trail once he sets foot on the Dionysus (that's the name of the yacht). In other words, it doesn't take our bad guy long to start switching bodies.

If you love animals as passionately as I do, be warned that this cinematic voyage will not be smooth sailing. One fairly lengthy section of the film is particularly hard to sit through. The stereotypical blonde, self-absorbed, high maintenance female character also may not sit well with feminists. Here's what really bothers me about this film, though. John Rhys-Davies' character has a huge tattoo on his back, and that tattoo stays with him as he moves from one body to another. Sure, its figure of a snake representing infinity, but we all know the director put that bloody huge tattoo there because he thinks at least some in his audience are too stupid to figure out the dumb body transfer plot point on their own. That's really subtle, Mr. Director.

Despite all of its problems, though, The Ferryman is still a halfway decent horror film. It never rises to the occasion of generating any suspense (especially since we always know whose body the bad guy happens to be inhabiting), and things get pretty darn silly toward the end, but it does serve up a reasonable amount of blood and a much better ending than you would ever expect from a film such as this.

1/5 Charon, we barely knew ye
  by Biff Fearless (Cape Coral, FL USA)
I have seen worse. Not much worse, but worse. I have to say that I was disappointed with the lack of screen time given Charon, the fabled Ferryman of the dead. The movie does a fair job of establishing the mood after a strange opening sequence. Once the film starts progressing after John Rhys-Davies' character comes aboard, the plot unravels and never regains its bearings.

2/5 Don't Pay... To watch this movie...
  by L. Huskey (J-ville, FL)
The horror , or supernatural genre has one thing I hate. Catchy ideas with crummy stories and many times even worse actors. Besides Davies the cast of this flick look like casting rejects from Reaper, which already has a cast of rejects (besides the devil of course:)

Anyhow as I stated above most movies have cool and catchy ideas and this one is that way as well. The problem is that we do not get enough of this story and then it is basically told through the ranting spirit of this dead girl that not only shows up just to seemingly have a cliched "save our heroine" role, but also gives the heroine the very thing she needs to stop the spirit. How this came about is what you will pay for if you rent this dustbin gem. As for me I hope to see this idea put together by people who actually know good story telling.

One last note. Whoever put together the soundtrack for this should be beaten until they can no longer hear. People humming opera classics would be better than the garbage on this movie.