Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

JULY 26, 2020

GENRE: GHOST, HAUNTED HOUSE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

As any astute moviegoer can attest, there are times where you see a movie you don't particularly want to see due to circumstances beyond your control: your vote got overruled by your date or friends, your first pick was sold out, etc. And on those occasions, you're not likely to enjoy the film as much as you would have if it was what you wanted to see all along, which sucks because it might be pretty good or even great if you were watching it under more desirable circumstances. In some cases I tend to wait a while and revisit it to give it a fair shake - sometimes it pays off, sometimes it turns out I was right the first time. But I usually REMEMBER the movie, which isn't the case with Thirteen Ghosts - it's now been close to twenty years since my one, unwanted viewing.

And it wasn't a case of the other movie being sold out or whatever - it was in fact the "consolation prize" after a soul crushing disappointment. One Saturday night in October of 2001 my buddy Joe called me up in my dorm room to let me know that Halloween was showing at a little indie theater about an hour away. I couldn't believe it! This was pre-Fathom Events and what not - I had never seen my all time favorite movie on the big screen. The showtime was 10pm, and this was just before 9 - he said he was coming to get me and we'd have just enough time to get there if he drove fast. And drove fast he did, hitting the upper 80s during safer stretches of the highway. We get to the theater at like 10:02, praying they had trailers and such, running into the lobby with a breathless "Two for Halloween, please!"

The box office lady looked very confused. "We're not showing Halloween?" she said. We panicked, thinking we had the wrong theater, and this was 2001 so we couldn't exactly double check on our cell phones. Luckily I had called the theater earlier to verify Joe's claims, so I just hit redial in the lobby and listened to their recording. "Yep, we're at the right theater, OK, now here are the showtimes... (whatever non-horror stuff they were showing), Rocky Horror every Saturday at midnight, Halloween 10pm." I look at the lady confused again, "Why is your phone line saying Halloween 10pm?"

Then I look at their marquee/calendar above her, and it all suddenly made sense. They weren't showing Halloween at 10pm that or any other night - on Halloween *night*, they'd be showing Rocky Horror again, except at 10pm instead of the usual midnight. It was just a weird phrasing on the phone line that got misinterpreted by whatever service supplied showtimes to movietickets.com or whatever we were using at the time. So we left, dejected as any horror fans could be, and drove back toward our school, assuming the night was over. Halfway there Joe suggested hitting the usual multiplex to see if anything was starting, and that's how I ended up watching Thirteen Ghosts instead of finally seeing my favorite movie on the big screen.

Needless to say, I wasn't exactly keeping an open mind, and didn't like it all that much. Down the road a bit I penciled in the idea of renting (or buying cheap) the DVD to give it another chance, but never got around to it until now, when Scream Factory added it to their library. And now that I'm watching it when I *want* to, I can report that... well, it's better than my angry self thought in 2001, but not exactly good. The main problem is that it's too cramped, both on a technical level and a narrative one. After a solid prologue showcasing the capture of one of the titular ghosts, and then a fine credit sequence that tracks over time to show how a happy family fell apart after a tragic fire, the seams start to show. First we get proper introductions to our heroes: Tony Shaloub (whose wife died in that fire) and his children, a teenage (?) daughter (27 year old Shannon Elizabeth) and a little boy who has become obsessed with death. But they also have a live-in nanny, which is confusing because the nanny is played by Rah Digga, who is *younger* than Shannon Elizabeth (who is seen doing half the nanny kind of work anyway) and also their financial problems keep coming up, so how the hell do they pay for this woman when they don't even seem to need her services in the first place?

But all their problems seem to be solved when F. Murray Abraham - the ghost hunter killed in the opening scene - leaves them his house, because Shaloub is his distant nephew/only living family. They instantly go check the house out and almost as quickly, the kids get lost, which is where the movie's problems really start. While the glass house with all its clockwork gears and moving walls is very cool looking and well designed, it was also built on a single floor set, which means we never get a really good look at it (even when they arrive, it's hard to get a sense of how big it is). So when the kids get "lost", it leaves you at a disconnect, because there's no sense of how far they could possibly be, and Steve Beck directs almost everything in closeup too, so even basic geography of a single room isn't always clear, let alone how far anyone is from one another. It ultimately feels like someone trying to pass off getting lost in one of those cheap haunted houses they have in traveling carnivals, i.e. a large trailer that sets you in a single zig-zag path from entrance to exit.

And that's pretty much all the plot! I think it's actually told in real time from the time they arrive; Shaloub goes to sign some papers with the lawyer (the film's sole kill in between the first and last ten minutes) and the kids are instantly lost, at which point Matthew Lillard's psychic character (posing as a power company guy to get into the house and find some money he is owed) repeats most of what we learned in the opening sequence. It's at this point you might assume that the opening was added (or at least heavily reworked) to give the movie some action up front, and in order to make sense out of it they had to instantly explain some of the things that were supposed to be revealed later (even Lillard's re-introduction as a power guy seems like we're supposed to just think he's a power guy at first, as we see it from the family's POV).

Then it's just an endless "let's find the kids" sequence, which is somewhat hampered by Shaloub's strange lack of concern (he calls his own son "the kid" constantly, as if he was just some random) but thankfully peppered by brief appearances from the woefully underdeveloped title characters. On the DVD (and possibly the film's website at the time?) and this Blu there's a special feature where Abraham's character explains their backstories, and while we don't need as much info as he offers here, it might have been nice to at least have some of it in the film so it wouldn't feel so random. The only one we get any real explanation for is the Juggernaut, because he's the one in the opening sequence and someone has to give the "how evil is this guy" speech that there is no time for in the house section of the film. Some of the ghosts are actually benevolent, such as a kid who (the bonus features tell us) got killed by a real arrow while playing Cowboys and Indians with a pal, but there is no payoff for this within the film - the only one who directly helps them is their mom's ghost, and the real villain (Abraham, who wasn't really dead, shocking) is dispatched by the Juggernaut and the others instead of the human heroes.

The ghosts are well designed though, so at least they leave an impression during their brief, largely random appearances. In a fun nod to the original film (where Castle's obligatory gimmick was a pair of 3D glasses that would let you see the ghosts during those scenes), Lillard has spectral glasses that allow him to see where the ghosts are, though there aren't enough pairs to go around. So this means a handful of fun "I know you can't see the ghost but I can and you're the one about to get hit, duck now!" kinda moments, though by the end everyone either has a pair (Embeth Davitz' completely nonsensical character stops by with extras) or is so worked up by the house moving around and/or the human villains wreaking havoc that it doesn't really matter where "The Jackal" is or whatever. When the title characters are afterthoughts and it's a haunted house movie that never gives you a good look at the house... it's kind of a problem!

Ultimately the only thing really keeping it from sinking is Lillard, who is dialed up to 11 in nearly every scene and lands some good jokes ("Yes, the ghosts are in THIS house - if they were next door, I wouldn't give a shit!"), plus (spoiler for 20 year old movie ahead) gets a great death when he sacrifices himself to save Shaloub, in yet another scene that Beck's claustrophobic direction prevents from landing as well as it should. It seems like there was plenty of room for them to get away from the approaching ghost, and also Lillard's sacrifice didn't exactly get Shaloub out of their shared predicament (he's still trapped in a hallway with the ghost), but hey. Thought that counts and all that.

Scream Factory's blu-ray has the usual new interviews (including one that runs fourteen minutes for a guy who only appears for about 30 seconds in the opening scene) and two commentary tracks, one with Beck and the other with the crew. I listened to Beck's, but his constantly fuzzy memory (for example, he says Silver didn't pay much attention to Ghosts because he was working on the first Matrix, which is impossible - they shot nearly two years after Matrix came out in theaters, and months before the sequels started their own productions) had me wondering how many things I didn't know were wrong were, well, also wrong. The old making of is kind of fun though, since it's the only time you hear from Shaloub and Lillard (neither of them appear in new features, alas), as is the aforementioned explanation for the ghosts, so once again I want to give props to SF for always carrying over old features when creating new ones.

Oh well. I tried! It just isn't that great of a movie. It's watchable and has some good bits here and there (and the sound design, if nothing else, is a good way to scare off neighbors if you wish), and it thankfully isn't dated (the FX are largely practical, so no CGI blemishes that tend to sink a lot of films from this era, including Bones which was released the same day) but it's just too compressed in both its story and its vision to really come to life. House of Wax is and always will be the crown jewel of the company's offerings - hopefully Scream Factory gets that one down the road.

What say you?

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