REVISITING THE MASTERS OF HORROR: DREAM CRUISE DIRECTED BY: NORIO TSURUTA

RICHARD MARTIN REVISITS THE MASTERS OF HORROR: DREAM CRUISE, DIRECTED BY: NORIO TSURUTA

30/7/2021

We are living in a golden age of horror on TV. Shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘American Horror Story’ have effectively taken the genre mainstream, offering weekly doses of gore and mayhem to the masses. Go back a decade or two however, and genre fans had far fewer options to choose from. Anthology shows, like ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘Monsters’ or ‘Tales From the Darkside’ were king during the horror heyday of the 1980s, providing cheesy and cheerful tongue in cheek horror in half hour bites. It wasn’t until 2005 that the TV horror anthology show got serious, and delivered arguably the most consistent, memorable and scary anthology show to date.

The brainchild of horror legend Mick Garris, the show’s title is no hyperbole. ‘Masters of Horror’ brought together the best horror talent Hollywood (and beyond) had to offer. Episodes directed by undisputed genre luminaries such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon were like hour long movies brought to your TV screen. High production values, A-List talent and a free reign to do whatever they pleased resulted in some truly unforgettable work from a group of horror legends let off their leash. These are stories that have stayed with me in the fifteen years since many initially aired and, in this series, I’ll be revisiting all twenty-six episodes, one at a time, to shine a light on a fondly remembered and undeniably influential moment in horror TV history.

Join me as I take a look back at;

Dream Cruise
Directed by: Norio Tsuruta
Starring: Daniel Gillies, Ryo Ishibashi, Miho Ninagawa, Ethan Amis
Original Air Date: 2 February 2007
Synopsis: A young lawyer suffering crippling nightmares linked to a trauma in his childhood boards a rich clients ship to spend time with the man’s wife, with whom he is having an ill-advised affair.

Revisiting the Masters of HorroR: Dream Cruise
Directed by: Norio Tsuruta

Twenty-five episodes down and only one to go and, I’m not going to lie, I’m a little sad to be wrapping things up with this final episode of Season Two (and last ever Masters of Horror episode) ‘Dream Cruise’, by ‘Ring 0’ and ‘Premonition’ director, Norio Tsuruta. It feels fitting that the last episode I watch for this series will be one that I have precisely zero recollections of watching back in 2007 when it aired. It’s almost like watching a brand-new episode! Let’s hope it’s another good one.

When we’re first introduced to Jack (Daniel Gillies) he is having terrible nightmares about a traumatic event in his childhood. We are shown a flashback of a much younger Jack and his little brother Sean as the brothers are out at sea. Sean tips the boat over whilst trying to grab his hat out of the water and the pair go overboard. Jack gets back to the boat ok and tries to grab Sean, but he can’t quite hold on and Sean begins to sink. Adult Jack wakes up before we see more, but it is strongly suggested that Sean drowned, leaving poor Jack with some serious guilt and a severe aversion to going out on the water.

Sucks to be Jack, who is now a lawyer with a major Japanese company. His biggest client, Eiji Saito (Ryo Ishibashi) has run into a spot of legal bother and Jack needs to see him urgently. He speaks to Eiji, who is quite happy to meet up, on the condition that it is on his boat. If Jacks major water phobia didn’t make this a bad enough idea, he is also having a secret affair with Eiji’s wife Naomi (Miho Ninagawa). These three people getting on a boat sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, so I’m all for it.

It’s worth mentioning the context in which this episode first aired. While the genre has lost a little of its mainstream appeal in the West in recent years, back in 2007 we were at the tail end of an explosion of Japanese horror movies. ‘The Ring’ had been a massive success in 1998, spawning multiple sequels, and ‘The Grudge’ had been released just a few years prior to Dream Cruise. We were being inundated with inferior American remakes, which just made the Japanese originals all the more popular. Bearing that in mind, ‘Dream Cruise’ came along at just the right time, offering an authentic J-Horror experience when remakes were becoming more prevalent and the original Japanese content was beginning to wane, at least in terms of availability outside of Japan. There are a lot of J-Horror tropes to be found in Dream Cruise, but we'll get to that later.

So, Jack, Naomi and Eiji are all on the boat, they’ve cast off and they are very much alone out on the open sea. Eiji can’t possibly know about the affair though, right? Wouldn’t that make for a boring episode! It’s pretty clear as soon as they are safely away from dry land that Eiji knows exactly what's been going on and that he intends to do something about it. Before he gets his chance the boat's propellor gets stuck in some seaweed and Eiji goes down to investigate while, on the surface, Jack and Naomi argue about whether to kill him (Naomi is staunchly pro-murder, Jack not so much). Eiji seems to get caught in the propellor, which surely makes this debate moot but, lo and behold, Eiji comes back out of the water, seemingly fine. Something fishy is going on here…

I’m talking a lot of plot at the moment and, in my defence, that’s about all there is to talk about at this stage. It has all been a very slow burn of a start. There have been a couple of early jump-scares but, other than that, this is very much in drama, possibly thriller territory. Certainly not much in the way of horror, but it is pretty tense. It was pretty clear from the second they got on the boat that some kind of showdown was inevitable, and the journey getting there has been very effective at keeping viewers on edge. The question now, is does it pay off?

So, I think it’s fair to say that I got a little lost at this point. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of exciting stuff happening. I just don’t claim to fully understand it. From what I can gather, there is a ghost on board but it is not Sean, haunting Jack for letting him drown. It is actually Eiji’s first wife, Naomi, who Eiji had murdered (on this very boat no less). Oh, and also, Eiji is dead and is possessed by Naomi, and has been dead presumably since he went down to fix the propellor. There are some awesome effects in these sequences, like when we see Eiji’s face as it truly is (i.e., horrifically mangled), or when Jack thinks he’s gotten the better of Eiji, only for his severed arm to start attacking him. The final reveal of Naomi is also very effective and she looks, well, like pretty much every J-horror ghost from the noughties, but it’s a trope because it works dammit!

If I have things right, Yuri then gets possessed by Naomi and attacks Jack, who defends himself but stops short of killing Yuri with an axe when Sean appears to him. I’m not quite sure what Naomi’s problem with the pair are, or why ghost Sean has chosen now to make an appearance, but Jack and Yuri jump overboard to escape. Free from the ship and safely ensconced in a life raft, the unhappy couple seem safe, until the (very angry looking) ghost of Naomi starts floating across the water toward them to finish them off. The image of Naomi slowly gliding across to them, in the dark, out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but empty sea wherever you look, is pretty scary stuff. Dream Cruise may have been low key for the most part, but that image will stay with me.

Out of options and with nowhere to go, Jack and Yuri are surely doomed now, yes?

Wrong.

Sean to the rescue! Ghost Sean grabs ghost Naomi and sinks to the bottom of the sea clutching her, saving the day whilst simultaneously demonstrating to Jack that he doesn’t hold him responsible for his death. Damn Sean, you got me right in the feels with that one.

Dream Cruise is a solid episode and is a rare entry in the Masters of Horror canon in that it is, for the most part, a very slow and atmospheric offering that relies on building up tension as opposed to big set pieces and bold practical effects. Having said that, I can’t help but feel that it is quite a slow-going episode to end the season on, and I would have liked to have seen Dream Cruise swap places with The Washingtonians so we could have ended on a cannibal massacre as opposed to a low-key moment where a man comes to terms with his young brother’s death as he stares wistfully at a photograph as the credits roll. I don’t want to take anything away from Dream Cruise, which is a creepy little thriller with some very well-done supernatural elements. It may not have been the ideal episode to end the series on, but it is a good episode and one that offers something different to the twenty-five episodes that came before it. In fact, I think that sums up Masters of Horror very well. Consistently surprising to the very last.

Thank you for joining me on this thirteen week long look back at a seminal series that is so near and dear to me. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as I have. In fact…

Anyone up for a rewatch?

If you missed any of Richard's previous Revisting The Masters of Horror articles, you can find links to them all here on our handy landing page

THE MASTERS OF HORROR

Richard is an avid reader and fan of all things horror. He supports Indie horror lit via Twitter (@RickReadsHorror) and reviews horror in all its forms for several websites including Horror Oasis and Sci Fi and Scary