We start off with this really choice visual of a helicopter in the middle of a cloud bank. Seriously, it’s beautiful, looking at this lone dot of a helicopter in this sea of clouds.
The beauty doesn’t last long as the chopper lands on the deck of a massive oil rig, and the folks onboard the chopper climb out and search the rig.
Ah, here we go…the PLOT has arrived. Seems this particular rig, the “Janus”, is to be toppled over and sunk to the sea bed, where it will form a “natural reef.” The folks in the chopper belong to an environmental activist group called “Action Planet,” which sounds like a bad cable network. “Action Planet” does not LIKE the idea of the Janus being sunk to the sea bed to become project housing for tuna, and is occupying the rig to prevent it from being sunk.
And by the way…every one of these “Action Planet” folks is very Scottish. It’s no small coincidence that the movie was funded by the Scottish Screen lottery–their accents are thicker than fog on the moors.
“Action Planet” discovers a fairly big problem–there’s a bad storm coming up on the “Janus” and the power’s off throughout the rig. A party goes forth to fix the latter problem, and manages to, after a fashion…the backup generator only powers CRUCIAL systems.
And another problem has cropped up for our beleaguered ecoterrorists–the crew is missing. Somehow, a crew of twenty or so people has just plain vanished off the deck of this oil rig, and can’t be found anywhere!
Things only get worse for “Action Planet” when their own people start dying off in various attacks. Even the ground around them is tainted–the reef was quarantined before “Action Planet” even arrived. AND, in the basement, a giant pentagram has been drawn on the floor with chalk.
Boy, sounds like “Action Planet” should’ve just gone to the rain forests and stayed THERE, no?
“Action Planet” becomes a smaller and smaller world after all, with members steadily dying off until they begin to get a grasp on the situation. The “Action Planet” survivors learn that their membership has been possessed, repeatedly, by some form of ghost. The only way to tell who’s possessed? Well, look for the guy killing people left and right. But for those who don’t want to wait for the bloodbath, there’s another way to tell. Just look for the person with the rapid healing capabilities. Apparently, the ghost doesn’t like to be in a damaged body–he’s got to knit it back together before he can take it for a spin.
And then, a fairly well put together ending takes place that I can’t tell you about, other than to say that it’s not half bad.
The extra features are simple enough, Spanish-only subtitles and a trailer gallery for “Jane White is Sick and Twisted,” “Icebreaker,” “Without Evidence,” “Atlantis Conspiracy,” and of course, “Ghost Rig.”
So, all in all, Ghost Rig may be low-budget, but it’s still pretty well done, with even a pleasant homage to John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”
