Malta: The Boat (2018)
There are two kinds of boat films. There are the kind in which the ship that people find themselves on is actively trying to kill them (either because there’s a lunatic on board – Dead Calm – or because the vessel itself is the lunatic – Death Ship), then there are the ones in which nature is trying to kill them (White Squall; The Poseidon Adventure).
The Boat doesn’t know what it wants to be. Which is why twenty minutes in I found myself sending a message to ask ChatGPT if I had upset it and it was trying to punish me. Chat’s response (“Short answer: you haven’t upset me, and I’m not punishing you. Longer answer – this is actually a good test case of where my recommendation logic can look a bit… blunt when applied to your specific taste profile.”) was very telling and went on to justify its choice of The Boat for Malta (basically: there’s a disc of it. It’s also the closest thing to my specified preference of folk horror, then horror followed by thriller). The fact that this was the most interesting thing about the whole experience of watching The Boat is telling in the extreme.
I can tell you the plot of the film in one sentence: an unnamed fisherman (he’s billed as “The Sailor”) finds a yacht adrift and it swiftly becomes clear that he is a moron. That’s literally it. Over the next eighty five minutes he manages to lose his own boat (which he had clearly secured properly), knock himself overboard (he hits himself with the sail and ends up dangling over the side, before hoisting himself back onboard), lock himself inside the abandoned yacht, somehow start flooding the boat, nearly hit a tanker, almost strangles himself as he tries to break the engine in order to stop hitting the tanker, and come close to drowning in the cabin he’s trapped in before realising he hasn’t been trying to open the door properly. He finally abandons the boat, before finding it again and sailing it to port. And that’s it. That’s literally the plot.
I’m not saying I want all of my nautical films to end with George Kennedy possessed by Nazis hellbent on killing everyone, or Melissa George trapped in a complicated timeloop of eternal damnation (note: this is exactly what I am saying), but I expect coherence. The script is the beginning of all good films, and if the script lacks certainty, everything else will. You can’t tease supernatural explanations (mysterious fogs; ropes detaching inexplicably; doors that don’t open) that don’t lead anywhere. You can’t suggest that something mysterious has happened (the lack of crew; the enigmatic bloodstain) without paying it off. You certainly can’t have a character named “The Sailor” who is simultaneously MacGyver (he jury-rigs a raft out of boards and flotation devices) and also Mr Bean (he is, without a doubt, one of the most stupid characters ever to set foot on deck). It’s beyond frustrating.
For a concept like this (a film with literally one man trying to survive a single location) you need certainty, drive and confidence. The film lacks all of those things. The main character cannot be simultaneously a genius and a cretin. He cannot make mistakes that a seasoned sailor would never make, and the fact that the film feels the need to justify his unbelievable actions by suggesting there might be supernatural factors at work is beyond annoying. Rather than drawing in the viewer it’s jarring and makes it very hard to either care about The Sailor or, frankly, the film at all.
Disc: Blu-ray (Region B, Germany)
Source: Amazon
Availability: Widely available globally (DVD and Blu-ray)
I've just noticed that the cover says "Abandoned...Adrift...Not Alone". Lying bastards.