Karl Urban's Horror Classic With All-Time Great Opening Scene Is Leaving Streaming

Grabbing the audience right away is vital to making a memorable horror film.

There may be no greater proof of this than Jaws, which boasts arguably the greatest opening scene in the genre’s history, as Steven Spielberg sinks his razor-sharp cinematic teeth into the viewer’s flesh from minute one. In the slasher realm, few movies have topped Scream and its harrowing first kill, a fitting introduction to the iconic Ghostface, as well as a shockingly premature exit for Drew Barrymore’s Casey. For pure mood-setting, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later opening, in which Cillian Murphy awakes from a coma to find the world ravaged by zombies, may stand alone. Then there’s Karl Urban’s 2002 supernatural horror outing, which teaches a master-class in hooking the audience immediately, then proceeds to fumble everything away.

Ghost Ship Delivers A Shocking Opening Scene

It's a horror masterpiece...for a hot minute.

Ghost Ship has almost no critical reputation at all, having sunk out of sight upon release, and soon it will be harder to find than ever as it gets set to leave streaming, being earmarked for removal from its current home on Tubi on August 31 (though it may quickly get a new streaming home after that).

While the 2002 horror film about a mysterious ocean liner remains freely available, genre fans can still easily check out its stunningly gory opening scene, which sets everything up by revealing the horrifying way this seemingly average ship became a ghost ship. Director Steve Beck lulls the viewer into a false sense of security by depicting an enjoyable night aboard the vessel, passengers and crew having a high old time on the ship’s dance floor, only to brutally pull the rug out by having nearly everyone on-board get sliced to bits by a snapping wire.

After such a terrifying and bloody spectacle, which leaves a young girl named Katie as the lone survivor, it's no surprise that the ship becomes haunted. But by the time salvagers find the vessel decades later and begin unraveling the mystery behind the first scene's gut-wrenching events, the story has lost all its momentum and been left adrift.

Ghost Ship Fades Fast After Its Bloody Beginning

Reviewers declared it dead in the water.

Unlike such fast-starting horror classics as Jaws, Scream, A Quiet Place and others, whose stories follow on in brilliant fashion from their audience-grabbing openings, Ghost Ship has little to offer beyond its marvelously executed kick-off. Critics have had little good to say about the movie over the years, sending it to a dismal 14% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus holds that Ghost Ship is too dependent on effects, and sorely lacking in other compelling elements, including a plot coherent or interesting enough to hold viewers’ attention.

Fans of Karl Urban may enjoy the Star Trek actor's early horror outing, while feeling grateful that he went on to much bigger and better things after his disappointing Ghost Ship excursion.