Andrei Tarkovski's 1972 film Solyaris is an exquisitely haunting work of art, an unsettling, horrifying delve into our worst fears about human relationships and our knowledge of others. This remake by Soderbergh promises the same, but with better special effects, a faster pace, and no appalling Mosfilm subtitles.

By all accounts, Clooney is brilliant as psychologist Chris Kelvin, who is sent to a station on a distant planet which some disaster (what disaster? No one seems to know) has befallen. He is told that his predecessor has committed suicide, and it is his task to find out what's going on. On arrival, he encounters Snow (Davies) and Dr. Gordon (Davis), both of whom show signs of unspeakable torment and seem unable to give him any information; as Snow says, 'I could tell you what's happening, but I don't know if that would tell you what's happening'.

It's tempting to do the same here: I could tell you that Kelvin's wife Rheya (McEllhone) wakes up in his bed on the space station, and also that she committed suicide years before ((mdash)) but, as in the film, you must come and see for yourself to appreciate what's going on.

When a salvage crew, led by Captain Sean Murphy (Byrne), discovers a passenger ship that has been missing for forty years adrift with nobody aboard, they claim it and tow it back to shore. As one would expect in a horror movie titled Ghost Ship, mysterious and evil things start happening.

Shot on the Gold Coast, Ghost Ship contains plenty of familiar faces: Australia's own Alex Dimitriades, New Zealand's Karl Urban (Eomer in The Two Towers, and a character in a really cool movie you've never seen called The Irrefutable Truth About Demons), and that woman from 'ER' (Juliana Margulies to everybody else).

As you would expect from the creators of Thir13een Ghosts and former Industrial Light and Magic effects gurus, the emphasis of Ghost Ship isn't deep and meaningful story or complex characters. Ghost Ship is an 'Oooh', 'Aaaaah', 'Eeeeew' creepy-effects popcorn-munching movie. Though far from a cinematic masterpiece, Ghost Ship is a fun way to spend 90 minutes.