Screamboat is the latest entry in the ever-popular “public domainsploitation” craze. Now, when I say popular, I mean that it is popular with producers. Movies based on famous public domain properties are cheap to make and have a built-in connection to a well-known IP. This ultimately allows for a strong return on investment on these movies (which also include Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, The Mouse Trap, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, and more) even if they are met with total apathy at the box office, as many are.

Screamboat is the second Steamboat Willie horror movie to hit screens in the last eight months. It subverts the iconic Disney animated short that popularized the character Mickey Mouse, which is now in the public domain. In this case, Willie (David Howard Thornton, better known as Art the Clown) is a vengeful, lonely mouse who is released from his years-long captivity on the Staten Island Ferry, where he then wreaks havoc by killing pᴀssengers in a variety of bloody ways while the deck hand Pete (Jesse Posey) and disaffected bartender Selena (Allison Pittel) try and stop him.

Screamboat Has Solid Production Value

The Kills, Setting & Willie Himself Are Well-Rendered

Despite my general distrust of the intentions behind these public domain horror movies, which seem to exist solely because there is money to be made and not because there is a genuine creative spark behind them, I tried to come to the Screamboat movie with an open mind and was rewarded. Not amply rewarded, perhaps, but substantially more than I could have anticipated. One reason for this is the fact that the movie has quite a solid production value.

It does have the dark, murky cinematography that mars many current movies at all budget levels, but the fact that the production was able to shoot on an actual decommissioned Staten Island Ferry boat (owned by Saturday Night Live‘s Colin Jost and Pete Davidson) gives its setting tremendous verisimilitude. The special effects are also lovingly rendered, avoiding the minimum-effort approach of some low-budget horror movies.

While these effects include the somewhat surprising but satisfying decision to have Willie actually be roughly the size of a cartoon mouse, it is clear that the most attention was rightfully spent on Screamboat‘s gore effects. Willie doles out a variety of creative kills, ranging from simple but effectively gross shock gags to a disgustingly elaborate garroting that transforms, at great length, into a full-on decapitation. These effects are certainly not for the faint of heart, but as a longtime slasher movie fan, I can affirm that they will more than satisfy gorehounds.

Screamboat Still Has Ample Flaws

Questionable Acting & Mediocre Comedy Abound

While it rises above the level of the average low-budget public domain horror movie, Screamboat still exhibits many of the genre’s usual flaws. That includes the acting, which is extremely spotty with very few exceptions, including that of Teen Wolf star Tyler Posey (brother of Jesse), who is giving the most bare-minimum performance I’ve ever seen as a radio operator who is mostly just sitting down every time he’s onscreen.

For the most part, the movie’s attempts at comedy failed to connect with me. Even great jokes would suffer if they were flatly delivered with poor timing, but in this screenplay, the majority of the jokes are just references to other Disney properties that have no spin besides pointing out that these things exist. Listlessly reciting the names of various aspects of Disney iconography such as Dole Whip, the Main Street Electrical Parade, and Frozen does not count as comedy just because Steamboat Willie is also a Disney property.

All the worst aspects of the movie coalesce in an extravagantly tedious third act, because there simply isn’t enough meat on the bones of Screamboat for it to force its loosely structured slasher framework into a proper plot resolution. Because this portion of the movie is generally more serious than the first two-thirds, the fact that the movie’s horror is similarly underbaked also shines through. There are satisfactorily creepy moments scattered throughout, but they are few and far between.

Additionally, the motif of Willie whistling (which is one of the only elements from the original short that is consistently retained) could have been much more effective if they weren’t pulling at random from a list of public domain tunes. While some of these work in the context of the movie (“Row, Row, Row, Your Boat” and a wolf whistle in particular), it was hard for me to be scared while puzzling out why I was hearing a whistled rendition of, say “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” or “Ring Around the Rosie.”

The Downsides Can’t Entirely Sink Screamboat

David Howard Thornton Mostly Prevents It From Being Punishing

Fortunately, most of Screamboat‘s flaws are tempered by other elements that work quite well. In fact, David Howard Thornton kills two birds with one stone (and a hammer, a knife, a forklift, and so on) with his performance, which redeems both the comedy and the acting. By using the miming skills he has shown with his performance as Art the Clown, he crafts a live-action killer who uses the physical logic of a cartoon, which is something I genuinely can’t say I’ve ever seen done before.

In fact, the movie is at its best when it embraces its cartoon nature, even if it generally leans more toward the sensibility of Looney Tunes than the work of co-directors Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. This is where Screamboat‘s comic sensibility gets broad enough to actually hit the target, and it occurs often enough to soften everything else around it. By the time that a character is trying to vanquish Willie by smashing him with a giant hammer, I was well charmed by this aspect of the 2025 horror movie.

In general, Screamboat‘s flaws are more obvious and more damaging than its merits (which also include the fact that the orchestral score frequently mirrors Willie’s whistling in a satisfyingly eerie way). However, it doesn’t quite rise to the level of “good” often enough for me to heartily recommend it. However, those who have a morbid fascination with this new crop of public domain horror could do much, much, much worse.