I borrowed this movie despite its extremely low rating, because I wanted to see how the crew manages to animate the presence of multiple worlds. As a matter of fact, they didn't - at least, so its seems. Some cameo appearance cut rather clumsily into the movie - that's it, this is what the majority of viewers think. However, the surprise comes at the end, and unfortunately then, when probably most of the viewers have already stopped this movie. I was also astonished when I saw that the Brazilian-Portuguese title of this movie means "Voyage into Death". This is THE spoiler.
That this movie is about a young girl who goes ALONE onto this boat (on reasons that are completely unclear), you understand only in the last 5 minutes. When you start the movie with the English title "Haunted Boat" in your head, you clearly think that the cameo appearances of strange figures are the "ghosts". But in reality, this movie is not like most other horror movies told from the distant writer-watcher perspective who can at almost any time differentiate between different levels of reality, it is told from the perspective of the young girl. We see her not alone, but together with the four friends because SHE sees them. We do not see that she is alone. So, the parallel worlds are not the cameo appearances flickering into the picture-stream, but the main story! We have at least two parallel worlds: The world in which the girl is and the world in which the 4 friends are. An intrusion of a third world is probably the young man with the medical skills who comes for a short time on the boat.
I cannot get rid of the deep conviction that with this movie, the movie-makers "cheated" an audience of several thousand people by letting them believe that what they have done is more or less a sophomore film-student elaborate with hastily "chosen" pseudo-actors that have met just the night before the start of the shooting in a dump after at least twelve beers. How mistaken can one be! But in addition to this big surprise which one learns only in the very last minutes, the end that follows gives another surprise. The girl is saved by a crew in a helicopter and another boat. When she has recovered from her shock, she visits again the place at the harbor where she ascended the boat together with the four friends. And there they are again! They wave her to them from the boat which has already taken off shore. She jumps into the water, arrives at the boat - and they are away. Miraculously beautiful. It remembers me a bit to the end of a poem by a Rhetoromance writer: When I awoke, I saw Death standing at my bed. But I closed my eyes. When I opened them again - he was gone.

This might be the poorest example of amateur propaganda ever made. The writers and producers should study the German films of the thirties and forties. They knew how to sell. Even soviet-style clunky leader as god-like father-figure were better done. Disappointing. The loss of faith, regained in church at last second just in time for daddy to be "saved" by the Hoover/God was not too bad. Unfortunately, it seemed rushed and not nearly melodramatic enough. A few misty heavenlier shots of the angelical Hoover up in the corner of the screen-beaming and nodding- would have added a lot. The best aspect is Hoover only saving the deserving family and children WHO had "proven" their worth. Unfortunately, other poor homeless were portrayed as likable and even good- yet the Hoover-God doesn't help them. A better approach would have been shots of them drinking spirits to show the justice of their condition. Finally, bright and cheerful scenes of recovery (after Hoover saved the country from the depression) should have rolled at the end. We could see then how Hoover-God had saved not just THIS deserving family, but all the truly deserving. Amateurist at best.