Ship of the Damned (2024) – Film Review
Ship of the Damned is a British horror film about a cursed ship full of cannibal pirates. It’s an independent production that was released straight to the Internet on April 1, 2024, and was available on DVD before the end of the month. It’s not a great film but still offers modest entertainment value.
The film begins with a short prologue set in 1622 that shows the crew of the ship hack a woman to death with their knives and then tear away pieces of her flesh and eat it raw. However, their victim is a witch, who curses them with her last breath. From that point onwards, the pirates, along with their on-ship whore Sayyida (Vicki Glover), are doomed to sail the seven seas forever and never set foot on land. To make matters worse, the only food they can stomach is human flesh.
After the scene where the pirates enjoy their nautical nosh, the story shifts to present-day England, where ship expert Elena (Hannaj Bang Bendz) is busy with a martial arts training session and keeps being interrupted by her phone. Her friend and training partner Charlie (Francesca Louise White) thinks it strange Elena keeps ignoring her incoming calls and asks who it is. It turns out the caller is Elena’s former boyfriend Michael (Jacob Anderton) who is still smitten by her and has a habit of trying to find excuses to keep in touch.
Later that evening, the phone rings again and Charlie intervenes, answering on Elena’s behalf and then handing the phone to her. This time, Michael—who has a desk job with the local Maritime and Coast Guard Agency—has a legitimate reason for reaching out. The Coast Guard has found a mid-17th-century pirate ship and towed it into port. Now Michael needs an expert to sign the paperwork before he sends anyone on board to investigate the vessel.
However, although Michael sees it as a box-ticking exercise, Elena does not and refuses to sign the paperwork until she has met the men who are going to board the ship and made sure they treat it with the respect that’s appropriate for such an old vessel.
She’s also keen to take a look on board herself and asks her former boyfriend to try and arrange this for her. The next day, when Michael gets in touch and says he’s cleared her visit, Elena rushes to meet him at the ship. At this point, neither of them knows that the two men Michael sent to examine the ship never made it back and it isn’t long before they become acquainted with its horrible crew, who plan to keep Elena on board and use her as a baby-making machine.
Although the basic premise is good, Ship of the Damned fails to impress on several fronts. At one point in the film, the ship’s captain, Jacob (Ben Manning), tells Elena how they came to be in their present predicament, explaining that after they took the witch on board, their luck changed for the worse. They had 12 days and nights of storms, the compass became useless, and all their food went bad overnight. After days without food, the pirates became so hungry they used the witch as food. Yet, in the prologue, none of the pirates are scrawny or look underfed. Far from it and a couple of them appear quite portly.
Even if you overlook or can forgive this inconsistency, there are issues relating to the ship’s radio that are harder to ignore. When Elena is surprised Jacob and his crew speak English, he uncovers a two-way radio and tells her they learned the language by listening to it. They got the radio from a ship they robbed 47 years ago. You have to wonder how they have been powering it for such a long time and why they don’t sound like they are speaking English as a second language. They do sound like pirates though, so it isn’t all bad.
The special effects in Ship of the Damned are quite poor, but the flesh-eating scenes are suitably gross, though, thankfully, not too over the top. However, all the external shots of the ship in motion are silhouette in nature, appear to have been created by CGI, are far from convincing and suggest a much larger crew than the rest of the film. If you remember the 1970s TV series, Captain Pugwash, you may find yourself drawing comparisons to the black cardboard cutouts used for the nighttime sailing scenes. The external shots of the ship sailing are so poor it makes it hard to forget you are watching a film, dragging you back to reality.
On a positive note, Bendz does a good job of bringing her character to life helping make Elena appear smart, at times sensitive, and also, when necessary, a seriously badass fighter. The scene where Elena beats Jacob in a one-on-one fight certainly earns Ship of the Damned a few extra points for entertainment value.
Anderton’s character, who is very beta-male and anything but dynamic, is strangely likeable. Obviously too weak for Elenea, Michael comes across like somebody’s favourite uncle, while Manning manages to make Jacob the only pirate on the ship worthy of special interest. The rest of the crew could almost be replaced with a few well-placed mannequin dummies.
All in all, Ship of the Dammned is a potboiler that contains no surprises and is only likely to offer limited appeal to serious fans of the horror genre. If you get the opportunity to watch the film for free, there are worse ways to kill time but it’s not really a keeper. If you buy it on DVD you will probably only watch it once and then downgrade the disc to a coaster.