Screamboat – 2025 – A long anticipated movie

Screamboat is not Steamboat Willie

Screamboat is a version of sorts from the first Mickey Mouse cartoon Steamboat Willie. I don’t know all the twists and turns about it but to keep the story short. The rights to it expired and everyone could now use the story. Just like with the Winnie the Pooh movies from a couple of years ago, it was “up for grabs” so to speak. I think it’s a pretty exciting concept to take something beloved and nostalgic and turn it into something else whether it’s an inventive musical cover or a cartoon made into a gory horror film.

But to be frank, Screamboat isn’t just a horror movie. I wish it was but there’s a fair share of comedy in it as well. For me, it would have been better if they left that aspect out of it and focused on making it really scary instead. But on the other hand, that might have taken some more effort and been harder to accomplish. You can hide some flaws inside a comedic concept more easily.

There are quite a lot of comedy

There is a lot of comedic stuff going on in Screamboat. Most of it is quite ridiculous in my mind. There might not be straight-up puns in there but the situations are so typical sometimes that it’s hard to tell if it’s on purpose or if they just didn’t have more imagination. I certainly hope it’s on purpose but I’m not so sure. I think they should have tried to make it a bit more original.

In short, the plot revolves around this Staten Island ferry and something that has been mysteriously awakened. We don’t really get to see what it is until quite a long way into the film. And even then, the picture is so dark that it’s hard to make anything out of it. As far as I can tell, it looks like they were trying to make look almost like a doll. A mouse doll that is. 

It’s a mouse but it’s not Mickey

But it’s also hard to see this even if you know about it. It just looks strange and doesn’t really give me any sense of Mickey Mouse. I guess that might have been a conscious choice though. Because even if the rights are now free to use, I guess there is a fine line between what is allowed and what Disney corporation might slam down on. It’s important to follow that path exactly I think. Disney has more power (read: money) to challenge anything that seems really remotely crossing the line. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of that battle. You’d probably go out of business.

Screamboat is pretty bad as I said before though. It’s not just that the situations are too typical, that the image of the mouse is too dark and unrecognizable. There’s also the acting which leaves much to be desired. Some of the gore is quite good, I’ll give it that. But you can’t base success solely on that. At least not if your name isn’t Lucio Fulci or Herschell Gordon Lewis.

It’s not interesting

It lacks the most important thing a movie should have, something interesting. It’s about 100 minutes long and when half of it has passed it feels like Screamboat should have wrapped it up. Instead, it goes on and on…

There is one scene that I found pretty clever though. It’s about halfway through when I said the movie should have ended. Maybe it’s not a scene where interest is starting to come back again, but it’s a cool way to weave in the Steamboat Willie name without even saying that it’s an old Disney short film. There’s even an animated section that clearly refers to the original but gets away with it. They even get the name “Walt” in there without claiming it’s that Walt. I think I could what that scene again a few times just to really wrap my head around the geniality of it.

But that’s the only scene that I really gonna take with me from this. The rest is a long boring movie that fails to capture my interest. and, it has way too many endings. There are a few too many opportunities to create a sequel. Not that I think one should even be made.