Screamboat 4K 2025

Legends of animation such as Mickey Mouse and Peter Pan have become public property, so anyone can use them, and everyone rushed to make horror versions. Of course, I understand everything—public domain and all that—but in this case, you can't use this opportunity so talentlessly! I haven't yet seen “The Universe of Perverted Childhood” with the maniac Winnie the Pooh, but I can say with my hand on my heart that this film is a failure. Instead of a well-thought-out story, we got a hastily made comedy slasher about an evil version of Mickey Mouse, who doesn't even look like Mickey!

The action takes place on the New York ferry Mortimer, where a young boy named Pete serves as a deckhand, greeting a motley crew of passengers, including Selena, a tourist and designer, and a cheerful group of drunk girls. The captain rushes to work his shift, ignoring the dispatcher's warning about thick fog, and takes the ferry out into the night.
Meanwhile, a couple of repairmen rummage through the hold for valuables, as the vessel, which has been sailing since the 1920s, is making its last voyage. As a result, as the female repairman put it, her older male colleague “released the plague” by opening a certain compartment.

And then it all started. The local Mickey Mouse, whose nature is revealed in the film itself, turned out to be a hysterical psychopath who constantly whistles tunes and makes faces. The reason for his aggression is not clear to me personally — this point is not fully developed. The evil mouse cruelly mocks the passengers, who seem to be asking for punishment. But at the same time, the film is mercilessly ruined by an atmosphere of absurdity, as if the director, who was told to make a horror film, decided to make a comedy instead, which is not a comedy at all.

A question for the filmmakers: who was this film made for? There is nothing to be horrified by here and, at worst, nothing to laugh at, and the characters are annoying. Personally, I love dark versions of famous characters because I love complex characters and the multifaceted nature of the world, but I'm not ready to praise a talentless work just because it's based on a theme I love. Screamboat is a completely empty film, in which I was only interested in the backstory of the local Mickey, and even that was more like a rough draft that needed refinement. Enough with the empty slashers and black comedies! Give me a worthwhile horror film with an interesting plot and well-developed characters!