Thirteen Ghosts review
by Ishmael Williams
Okay, let’s get right too it. This movie was, really, ho-hum. Oh during the ride, it was fairly suspenseful, as you knew things were going to happen, but not where or when. Good suspense films work like that and this movie wants to be good suspense. And during the movie, it achieves good suspense on a number of occasions.
Tony Shalhoub plays Arthur Kriticos , father of two. During the opening credits we learn that he’s fairly successful, and has a happy life until he loses his wife in a fire. After that, things don’t seem to go well for, and when the action actually begins, he is in rather worse circumstances. Enter a mystery lawyer, with a legacy a house built by Kriticos' uncle, played by F. Murray Abraham. F. Murray Abraham, you say? That can’t be good as he killed Mozart. Well, I’ll neither confirm nor deny his involvement, because that would be telling.
The real star of this movie, though, is the house in which it takes place. This isn’t a creaky, dimly lit, ages old domicile built on some graveyard. Rather, it’s a modern, up to the minute glass house that is actually a machine designed to some evil purpose. The house is a magnificent maze of twisty passages, all different, with walls that move, changing doorways from they were they were before. Long hallways become short, and then long again.
The camera work captures the enclosures of the house well and propels you into the feeling of claustrophobia that the director obviously sought. But you also never get a real sense of what is where in this house, and it actually turns out to be fairly confusing.
Shalhoub is convincing as the rather hapless hero caught in this horror house. The two kids, played by Shannon Elizabeth and Alec Roberts are almost too good to be true. There’s a wisecracking housekeeper of some sort whose only real presence in the movie is to provide the comic relief. And then there’s Matthew Lillard who plays a psychic with a nicely honed wisecracking charm. He’s actually the best in the movie.
Suspense movies, I think, should stick with you after the movie is over. Perhaps it should disturb you on the way home, or perhaps make you glad to have left the movie to the real world, which is much calmer and less stressful. And I had that sense of relief and release from this movie. For about five minutes. And then, I wondered about two characters who disappeared and then reappeared later, from like nowhere. And what about the guy who showed up towards the end, looking about in the same worn condition as he was when we saw him at the beginning why had he not changed since the movie started? And…
Well, you get the idea. Plot holes shouldn’t be so obvious and so glaring. And these holes, when you think of them, detract from the movie. Not that it could ever have been great, but certainly the holes make it less than it is. Give it two beakers, and wait for a rainy Saturday night. Fire up the VCR and watch this one as cheaply as you can. It’s a 2 beaker film, so avoid the even the matinee price.
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Thirteen Ghosts
Two
Beakers
(out of five)
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Ishmael I. Williams is a fan of both movies and television, and
doesn't get to see as much as he'd like in any given year. Still, what he
does get to see he enjoys writing about, and hope people will stop by from
time to time to see what he has to say. He also thinks he's going to be a
pretty good foil for Tim Wick, fellow board member and with whom he often
disagrees on a film (ask Tim and Ish about Wild Wild West sometime).
He previously wrote about Monsters, Inc.
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