We Can’t Control the Titanic

Here we go…

As it’s turned out, I’ve reviewed a lot of Titanic movies. It’s gotten to be kind of a So Bad It’s Good tradition. This year I happened upon 2022’s Titanic 666 while browsing through Tubi, and a movie with a title like that can’t be anything but so-bad-it’s-good, right? Heh. Heh. Heh.

The movie opens in 1912 on the night of the sinking, and a James Horner-esque version of “Nearer My God, To Thee,” plays over the scene. A young woman clings to an overturned lifeboat, and sees her boyfriend, Charles on a piece of debris. He swims toward her, but then goes under, and when he finally comes up, he’s a zombie.

Yeah, that’s how this movie rolls.

Fast forward to the present, when “100 years after the launch of the original, Titanic III will set sail.”

Jaw, meet floor. Spit, meet take. It’s a sequel to Titanic II. A sequel. Oh, Asylum. You absolute devil dogs. Why would you do this? Why?

Ugh. Anywhoo, two of the luminaries on board are influencers Jackson (Derek Yates) and Mia Stone (AnnaLynn McCord), and a little bit into the voyage they come on a woman who’s going through an incantation in the hold. Now, unbeknownst to them, this woman, whose name is Idina Bess (Lydia Hearst), stowed herself and her giant musette bag in a teeny suitcase. Apparently she’s a contortionist.

Since emerging, Idina’s been skulking around the ship and happens upon some artifacts that were brought on board by Professor Hal Cochoran (Jamie Bamber). These artifacts are so important that they’re displayed in unlocked display cases. After Hal lectures Idina on touching Wallace Hartley’s violin, she’s easily able to make off with a hairpin belonging to some unnamed passenger.

Now, Mia, Jackson, and one of their superfans, Nancie (Giovannie Espiritu), are standing in the hold watching in horror as Idina slashes her hand with the hairpin and bleeds all over everything as she repeats her incantation. There are not only weird sounds going on and a sudden wind out of nowhere, but Mia and Jackson’s phones go dead.

“I’m getting a really bad vibe,” says Mia.

Gee, Mia, ya think?

Mia, Jackson and Nancie go back to the party, where Mia and Jackson go out on the deck to do a livestream and drink some kind of vodka-based concoction called an Iceberg. That’s where they become the movie’s first victims.

Well, Mia does. After they meet a ghostly figure in a derby playing “Nearer My God, To Thee” on a violin, Jackson disappears into a void and the ghost plays an ear-piercing note that somehow kills Mia. When the crew finds her, there’s an investigation on the line of “Round up the usual suspects,” and by that I mean the Chief of Security, Brian Andrews (Joseph Gatt) brings in Hal.

Hal, understandably, is aghast that he’s the prime suspect, but there’s nothing he can do but cope and seethe in the brig, which looks remarkably lived-in for a brand-new ship.

Things don’t get better from there, either. Idina’s little performance in the hold summons the ghosts of Titanic passengers out for revenge, and they come in droves. One of them is Idina’s great-grandfather, Captain Smith, natch. The guests not only meet soul-sucking ghosts throughout the ship, but the ship hits an iceberg almost head on, and, naturally, sinks, still in one piece. The crew are helpless to stop any of this from happening, because the ship is mysteriously controlling itself, and they’re reduced to calling for help on the radio. One literally says, with the greatest of irony, “We can’t control the Titanic!”

OK. we all know this is not a movie to be taken seriously in the least. After all, it’s from The Asylum. So we’re not gonna. There are way too many howlers for that which go beyond Asylum’s usual gaffes, and in this case, there’s an opener that just stops short of being lawsuit bait for James Cameron. The historical errors are numerous from start to finish, and I’ll just give some highlights.

First of all, the opening scene shows the Titanic sinking in one piece and landing two-and-a-half miles down completely intact, with the furniture falling prettily after it, including a weird thing that looked oddly like a Stüssy logo. Secondly, the lifeboats are shown slamming into the water so hard they break apart, but we don’t have a single record of the lifeboats doing that. Also, when that young woman is stranded on the overturned lifeboat, where are her boatmates? The boat was basically full when it hit the water. Where did those people go?

Then there’s the character of Hal, who’s a walking howler all by himself. Jamie Bamber is wasted in the role, he really is. Anyway, Hal claims Wallace Hartley’s violin was found at the bottom of the Atlantic. It wasn’t. There are various theories as to how the violin came to be found, but none of them involve recovering the violin from the bottom of the ocean. Hal also claims to have Captain Smith’s wedding band, which is really ludicrous since Smith’s body was never recovered.

But the capper, oh, the capper: Hal claims to be the chief technical officer on the expedition that found the wreck in the first place. Er. No. The wreck was discovered in 1985. Hal either wouldn’t have been born yet or just a kid. Tacky, movie. Very tacky.

Other than that, the movie is pretty typical for Asylum fare. The acting is shoddy, as is the CGI, the plot is completely improbable, the ghosts look as if their costumes were bought at Spirit Halloween, and the movie makes the fatal error of killing off Jackson and Mia, its two most interesting characters, before anything has a chance to really get going. It’s not scary. It’s not as funny as it could be, either. It’s kinda nice to be back on the Queen Mary again, though.

It seems weird to say it, but Titanic II was actually the better film. Both of these movies are in pretty poor taste, but Titanic II was slightly less lame and for an Asylum film that’s saying something.

For more so-bad-it’s-goodness, please take a look at Days One, Two, and Three. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you tomorrow for another review…

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Titanic 666 is free to stream on Prime and Tubi.

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