A script that leans into melodrama and wildly uneven performances are the undoing of “The Ghost Trap,” an immersive peek into Maine lobstering life and the people who live it.
Zak Steiner and others in the cast doing the baiting, dropping, hauling and emptying the traps from their weathered lobster boats give the picture credibility. But we can’t help but notice dashes of inexperience, amateurism and players who never learned to manage much more than affectation when “acting” was called for.
You’d have to spend time judging student films to see more people on one set who plainly don’t know how to fake smoking a cigarette.
Steiner plays Jamie Eugley, the latest and perhaps the last of a long line of lobstermen on Great Pound Island, Maine. His last name created his nickname among his mates — “Ugly.” But Jamie’s the Marlboro man of lobsterman.
The hunk works his boat with his longtime “sternman” and lady love, Anja (Greer Grammer), who is over the moon for him. He doesn’t really fend off questions about “When’re you gonna put a ring on it?” from the grizzled ships’ store owner (Heather Thomas). It’ll happen.
But of course that’s foreshadowing for the woman-overboard accident that leaves Anja with a brain injury. Three years of rehabilitation later and she’s still childlike, stuttering, struggling to regain what she might remember from their old life but sounding and seeming like a finger-painting six-year-old.
Jamie got her into this, so there’s nothing for it but to bear the guilt and spend them into the hole with rehab as he tries to support them in an embattled fishery where outsiders are elbowing their way in even as over-fishing, regulation and rising business costs turn the locals cutthroat.
Jamie’s got a lobstering pal (Taylor Takahashi) who drags him out fishing for summer season coeds at the local pub, a dad (Steven Ogg) who disapproves of his work ethic, a generations-old feud with the rival Fogerty family and a town that notices his every move, including his response to the cute coed turned charter sailing gypsy (Sarah Catherine Hook) who comes on hard with the “Forget your troubles. Let’s sail off to Key West!” pitch.
The “trap” of the title is a lobster trap dropped overboard without its float attached, or one left on the bottom because the line to that float has been cut. As a metaphor, it suits Jamie’s life — stuck in a business that’s going going under, tied to romantic obligations, buried in debt and lashed to a town where he feuds with the Fogertys because it’s the family way.
The assorted plot elements are introduced somewhat hamfistedly, which bends the drama towards melodrama. And just enough of the cast is “off” to stop too many scenes in their tracks with thoughts of “You couldn’t get somebody better?”
Not going to name nepo baby names, but somebody’s got no idea how to make “brain trauma” come off with believable symptoms.
And again, try not to notice the cigarettes as props.
Rating: unrated, fisticuffs, profanity, smoking, alcohol
Cast: Zak Steiner, Greer Grammer, Sarah Catherine Hook, Taylor Takahashi, Steven Ogg, Heather Thomas, Billy Wirth, Xander Berkeley and Whip Hubley
Credits: Directed by James Khanlarian, scripted by James Khanlarian and K. Stephens, based on a novel by Stevens. A Freestyle release on Amazon Prime.
Running time: 1:46
Movie Nation 