Review: ‘The Ghost Trap’ achieves the rare feat of getting Maine right on film

By Dennis Perkins, Portland Press Herald

Zak Steiner as lobsterman Jamie in “The Ghost Trap.” Photos courtesy of Khanlarian Entertainment

Mainers may already be familiar with the story of “The Ghost Trap,” Maine novelist K. Stephens’ 2009 tale of love, loss and danger among Maine’s lobstermen.
A young, third-generation lobsterman named Jamie finds his already shaky personal and professional life upended by a near-tragedy that begins to feel more and more like an actual tragedy with each passing year. Already fighting with his stern father and the encroachment of environmental regulations that have turned each day’s catch into a high-stakes gamble, Jamie’s one happiness is tossed overboard along with his beloved girlfriend, Anja, on a seemingly ordinary day on the Maine ocean.
What follows is part wrenching drama, as Jamie attempts to care for the now-disabled Anja while succumbing to the temptation represented by a free-spirited sailor named Happy who sails tourists back and forth from the Florida Keys. A thriller element creeps in as well, when Jamie finds his traps cut and himself embroiled in a simmering, violent feud among the town’s lobstermen, a rival lobstering family of roughnecks, and a from-away rich fisherman with plans to buy out everyone’s livelihood.
Now a feature film written and directed by James Khanlarian, the film version of “The Ghost Trap” hits video on demand and DVD on Friday, with the film getting one of its few big-screen premieres at Belfast’s Colonial Theatre. It’s a fitting homecoming for the film, which was shot in Maine and California, with a focus on the Midcoast. Here are five reasons it’s worth seeing.

“The Ghost Trap” does Maine justice.

As someone who’s never set foot on a lobster boat and who has only lived in Maine for a measly 37 years or so, I can’t speak to how accurately Khanlarian and company get the details of Maine lobstering. But everything just feels right, as star Zak Steiner, all lanky muscle and scruffy beard, hauls his traps with deft weariness, and the interactions all around the Maine fishing village setting come off as lived-in and authentic.

The film credits the Maine lobstermen who loaned out their actual boats (and presumably kept the production honest), and while there are the requisite sequences set at a picturesque lighthouse and the Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland, “The Ghost Trap” (unlike another recent Maine-adjacent movie) never seems like a tourist here itself.

“Hey, it’s that guy/gal!”

The film is dotted with very good actors you probably recognize but maybe aren’t sure from where. Star Steiner did six episodes of “Euphoria” and was in the unnecessary “White Men Can’t Jump” remake. Greer Grammer (apart from being Kelsey’s daughter) was the star of “Awkward” and has been in the biz since childhood.

As Jamie’s callous father, Stephen Ogg, with his somehow threatening eyebrows, will be familiar as a bad guy in everything from “Better Call Saul” to “The Walking Dead” to TV’s “Snowpiercer.” (Gamers will likely recognize his voice, since he played fan favorite “Grand Theft Auto V” character Trevor.) You likely won’t recognize “The Fall Guy” 1980s series star Heather Thomas as the tough old broad running both the town’s saloon and general store for how naturally she fits right in. There’s even one of “The Lost Boys,” as Billy Wirth shows up as the menacing patriarch of Jamie’s rival Fogerty family in a pivotal scene.
And now Maine-based character actors Whip Hubley (“Top Gun”) and Xander Berkeley (everything, including “Terminator 2,” the original “Candyman” and “Apollo 13”) fill out the cast with their in-demand talents.

The Maine accent report.

The Maine accent presents a degree of difficulty for actors that generally ensnares even the best from-away thespians. With Hollywood rushing to adapt the next Stephen King story so regularly, that means Mainers are often taken out of things with each effortful “ayuh.”

“The Ghost Trap” is largely successful, thankfully, if not in capturing the Maine way of talking 100% correctly, at least allowing its Mainers to sound like they’re from this planet. Steiner carries much of the load as Jamie, and the star couches the quiet fisherman’s increasingly coiled and explosive pain in a confidently believable cadence. The cast of pros all adopt a strategy of not doing too much, a trap that so many non-Mainers fall into when either not doing their research, or maybe doing too much by watching other bad Maine accents in other media. Like the film’s fishing town setting, I never got distracted by the artifice, which is a pretty impressive achievement, considering the way these “just visiting” Maine productions go.

The movie’s positive effects on the Maine film scene are everywhere in the credits.

As long as I’ve been writing about movies in Maine, I’ve banged the drum about how attracting movie and TV production would only benefit Maine’s hard-working film professionals. And scanning the credits for both in-front-of- (actor Thomas Ian Campbell) and behind-the-scenes (Mazie Bartels-Biswell, Rebecca Myshrall, Karlina Lyons, Kyle Walton) Maine talent is an added delight.
Seriously, Maine legislators, we need to pass tax incentives for film and TV production in the state. Like, yesterday.

“The Ghost Trap” is just a good film.

My quibbles are relatively minor. (But quibbling being my business, here goes.) Some of the fishermen’s griping about governmental regulation feels perfunctory for a story like this, at several points appearing to come from offscreen as if producers forgot to assign the thankless lines to particular actors. A climactic visitation (?) feels as hokey as it is out of place in such a down-to-the-water tale. And the film’s quest for a villain settles on some lazy stereotyping in lieu of the more grounded conflicts its characters act out as just part of their daily lives.

Sarah Catherine Hook’s Happy never quite gels as anything but a conception of the carefree life Jamie longs for away from his generational existence working the lines and his deeply conflicted loyalty to the struggling Anja. (Hook is fine, but she’s essentially the template for what my former A.V. Club colleague Nathan Rabin coined as the “manic pixie dream girl” stereotype.) And the film’s ending, while studiously avoiding easy answers, feels both rushed and perhaps too ambiguously dreamy for its own good.

All that said, “The Ghost Trap” is a creditably compelling drama/crime story that just so happens to be set in a specific Maine community. It’s well drawn, responsibly crafted and brimming with very good actors all filling out the plot’s twists with professionalism and slow-burn intensity. Steiner is especially good, and Grammer, tasked with portraying a specific and challenging form of disability for much of the film, succeeds in making the very changed Anja as tragic as she is deeply human.

“The Ghost Trap” screens at Belfast’s Colonial Theater Friday through Sunday (where K. Stephens and several crew members will be in attendance). Also, look for it on streaming and video-on-demand platforms starting Friday.

An additional date has been added to the lineup. Nickelodeon Cinema in Portland is screening The Ghost Trap on November 6 at 7 p.m.