Review: Thir13en Ghosts (2001)

Thir13en Ghosts (2001)

Rated R for horror violence/gore, nudity and some language

Score: 2 out of 5

Thir13en Ghosts, the creatively-misspelled remake of the 1960 William Castle flick 13 Ghosts, is a strange duck among horror remakes of its time period. I can't call it a good movie. It's barely coherent, the direction and editing are overstylized to a fault, the characters are ridiculous, and it's not particularly scary. However, even with all its problems, there is a reason why this film has become a cult classic among horror fans of a certain generation even as other, slightly better horror remakes have been mostly forgotten: its production design alone makes it worth watching at least once. Not only is this one of the most graphic movies to come out in what was otherwise a very dry period for Hollywood horror when it came to that sort of thing, the titular ghosts and the practical effects used to bring them (back) to life were outstanding, crafting a story for each of them such that I wished they were in a better movie. The setting, combining an ultra-modern aesthetic with occultism and even a touch of steampunk, is also quite inspired and serves the story better than the writing did. It's still a very dumb movie that's pure style at the expense of substance, but I will say this: I was never bored.

The plot concerns Arthur Kriticos, a man who has been in dire financial straits and struggling to raise his kids Kathy and Bobby ever since his wife Jean died in a fire that destroyed their house. So when he finds that his wealthy, eccentric uncle Cyrus has recently passed away and that he has inherited his fortune, Arthur happily moves his family and their nanny Maggie into Cyrus' mansion. Well, guess what: the place is haunted as fuck, largely because Cyrus was a ghost hunter who built the house as an occult machine powered by the angry spirits he has stored in specially-designed holding cells in the basement, one that would let its operator see the past, present, and future. Naturally, the ghosts get loose, and now Arthur and his family have to survive the night, together with Ben Moss, the executor of Cyrus' estate, Dennis, a psychic who used to work for Cyrus and knows what the spirits are capable of, and Kalina, an old foe of Cyrus' who wants to set the ghosts free and deliver them to their final resting place.

With one exception, the human characters in this film aren't really worth anything. The only ones who have anything so much as resembling an arc are Arthur and Dennis, the former of whom finds out that one of the ghosts is his dead wife and the latter of whom has been driven almost to the brink of madness by his powers. Matthew Lillard as Dennis was my favorite actor in the film, a deliciously hammy figure who plays his "mad oracle" character as something akin to a drug fiend. While Arthur may have been meant as the audience POV character, it's Dennis who will likely serve that role for any genre-savvy horror fans as he figures out long before anyone else that the shit is going to hit the fan. Seeing Tony Shalhoub, of all people, playing a "horror dad" was amusing, but he was just alright in the role, blending in much the way the rest of the cast did. Bobby was a generic "horror kid", Kathy was a generic "horror teen" (and a waste of Shannon Elizabeth), Maggie was a generic "sassy black woman", Kalina was a generic "tough chick", and Cyrus was a forgettable villain, with F. Murray Abraham leaving little impression. The editing also makes an utter hash of so much of the film, fond of quick cutting and visual trickery to the point where much of the eerieness in the setting and the titular ghosts is lost -- and where the editing didn't do so, the script more than accomplishes by flowing in the most predictable directions. This is a film that calls its attacks well in advance, removing the tension from the proceedings almost entirely and leaving precious few actual scares.

The saving grace is the ghosts themselves. This is where a good chunk of the movie's surprisingly large budget ($42 million) went, and they got their money's worth. Each of them is immediately visually distinctive, whether it's the more straightforwardly aggressive and monstrous ones or the ones who linger in the background. My favorite, and probably the best-known of them, was the one called the Angry Princess, and not just because she's a hot naked woman; she gets one of my favorite scenes in the film when she starts haunting Kathy, and seems to grow increasingly annoyed with her. While the backstories for most of the ghosts are only laid out in the bonus material, one look at them and you can immediately get a sense of what their deal was in both life and death. Even when it comes to those with just a couple of scenes, these spirits have personality to spare. Speaking of death, they bring the pain, killing people in creative and cringe-inducing ways that range from a "vertical slice" cutting a man in half lengthwise to painful-looking back-breaking. I would've loved to see them and their stories have a greater role in the plot beyond just serving as Cyrus' pawns, especially given how Arthur's wife Jean being one of the ghosts becomes fairly important to Arthur's arc. The setting of the film is also very inspired, eschewing traditional "haunted house" iconography in favor of a mix of sleek, modern lines and technology with all manner of occult touches, like if Satanists designed an Apple store. It felt almost like a laboratory out of The Cabin in the Woods or a Resident Evil game where scientists with sinister intent seek to study ghosts for reasons that can't possibly be good, appropriate given Cyrus' plan for them. It's a setting that could've easily become a breakout character in its own right if the film had given it some time in the spotlight, the kind of setting you don't normally see in films of this type.

The Bottom Line

It's a film with a lot of wasted potential, but if you're a fan of cool horror FX who's willing to put up with a lot of faults in order to see something really nifty, this one's got plenty to like about it. Shame that the good parts couldn't be in a better film overall.