Screamboat review – rodent IP horror sends Mickey Mouse on a ferry rampage

The Guardian

31-03-2025

Here's another draining bout of horror opportunism, spawned in this instance by the copyright expiring on Disney's Steamboat Willie, the 1928 landmark animation that launched Mickey Mouse into the world. Scurrying on to screens months behind the similarly motivated The Mouse Trap, Steven LaMorte's bloody pastiche opens with a quote coyly ascribed to 'Walt D' before plodding mirthlessly in the pawprints of those recent Winnie-the-Pooh carve-ups, demonstrating no greater brio, invention or wit. Its mock Mickey is a genetically modified super-violent pipsqueak (played by Terrifier breakout star David Howard Thornton, in mangy rodent costume), let loose from the sewers by blundering engineers; rather than the jaunty steamboat his predecessor commandeered, he wreaks murderous havoc on a grimy approximation of the Staten Island ferry, whistling while he works.
The whole never recovers from its leaden opening half-hour, devoted to lugging potential corpses onboard leaving us to wonder who, if anyone, will survive the lacklustre carnage. (Hopes are lowered like a flag for the airheaded bachelorette party.) LaMorte notionally expands the scope of his non-satirical attack by having the critter's victims mouth familiar Magic Kingdom phrases. 'Can you feel the love tonight?' says one topless passenger, shortly before being hosed down with gore. One point in favour of these cheap-and-cheerless cash-ins: in an era of dead-eyed data scraping, they may yet radicalise a generation of sleepover attenders to pursue ways of toughening up copyright law.
Arterial spray fans won't feel short-changed, but many of the kill scenes are torpedoed by poor lighting, clumsy-to-inept camera coverage and cutting, and effects that only erratically match the action. Amid a number of Sharknado-level performances, and accidentally serving the public by muffling dialogue that wasn't exactly sparkling to begin with, Thornton gives his Mickey a certain bouncy malevolence – but we get the idea after only a few minutes of watching the actor tap dance on a pop culture grave. These tacky novelty films have been unlucky to land at a moment when mainstream horror has seriously raised its game, but something as cut-price, retrograde and reactionary as this really does deserve the damning label of Mickey Mouse fare.
Screamboat is out in US and UK cinemas on 2 April.