A huge thanks to one of the Producers of Haunting of the Queen Mary for asking us to check out the movie and bring you our honest thoughts on this 2023 horror feature film about the iconic RMS Queen Mary. Here’s our Haunting of the Queen Mary review.
Mysterious and violent incidents occur during a family’s 1938 cruise aboard the RMS Queen Mary. These events strangely connect to another family’s fate on the same ocean liner in the present.
A beautiful ocean-liner in California which a rich history and a landmark for paranormal enthusiasts across the globe now has its own horror movie.
Two families stories that become intertwined across time as we watch a family in the past and a family in the present in similar circumstances facing an entity that engulfed the ship on Halloween in 1938.
©QM Film Productions Limited
Starring Alice Eve and Joel Fry the film visually is stunning with beautiful camera work, this independent feature has a glossy big budget blockbuster feels to it that instantly heightens its appeal and invests me as a viewer.
The beautiful ship shown off in all of its glory as we see the beautiful interiors of the past lined with the more chilling empty and lifeless hallways of the present. There’s a contrast in atmosphere and mood as we bounce between past and present but for me the jumping does get a little tedious.
I understand focusing on the past story to make the present one more relevant but it feels like too much context is being exposed to the audience and this bouncing back and forth starts to wear thin.
©QM Film Productions Limited
A simple ghost tale aboard The Queen Mary in the present would have been much easier to follow and I feel this constant back and forth distracts from the objective of the film. It’s hard to invest in and becomes quite distracting despite the beautiful visuals.
Matching a nice visual style with some wonderful scares certainly hits home where it matters. The Scary moments during the movie are fresh, come out of nowhere and absolutely no one is safe with one very big ‘gasp inducing’ moment happening very early on in the movie.
Haunting of the Queen Mary feels polished in one department and lacking in others and one area that I feel as though it lacks is its story.
We’re being led between these interwoven stories without much of a guide or clue as to what is going on. The movie is puzzling and alienating me as a viewer and by the time the credits roll there are many loose ends that just haven’t been tied together making the entire crossover between past and present rather redundant.
It almost feels as though Christopher Nolan worked on this movie as we dive into this time warp without much context or explanation and we’re just confused audience members in a world where the only people who understand the movie are those who created it themselves.
Haunting of the Queen Mary is certainly a film that begs your brain to turn off and try to not understand what’s happening, believe me, we’ve tried and yet we still cannot for the life of us figure out what’s happening.
©QM Film Productions Limited
Scares aplenty and looking beautiful from start to finish give Haunting of the Queen Mary some major positives but I think the ships compass when it comes to linear storytelling went out the window the second the final draft was completed.
Haunting of the Queen Mary review by Sean Evans
Our Rating
Summary
For all of the positives that make Haunting of the Queen Mary float it’s sadly weighed down by narrative anchors and confusing flashbacks that cause this movie to ultimately sink. A film with promise but sadly one that falls a little short of its potential.
