Cast: Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Shannon Elizabeth, Rah Digga, F. Murray Abraham, Alec Roberts
Director: Steve Beck
Producers: Gilbert Adler, Dan Cracchiolo
Screenplay: Neal Stevens and Richard D'Ovidio
Cinematography: Gale Tattersall
Music: John Frizzell
U.S. Distributor: Warner Brothers
There's something eerily familiar about his motion picture - like most horror movies that try to cash in on the mood of the Halloween season, this one has more corn than scares. And, like the Jack O'Lantern glowing feebly from the front porch, the script for Thirteen Ghosts is hollow. In general, I don't anticipate much from horror movies, so why is it so rare that they deliver even with low expectations? All I'm asking for are a few moments that cause my skin to creep, a shock or two to get me to jump in my seat, and some moderately entertaining material in between. Yet Thirteen Ghosts, like so many cinematic corpses to precede it, fails at the seemingly simple task. Am I doomed to watch endless re-runs of Halloween to get my October 31 fix?
On some level, Thirteen Ghosts isn't trying to be a straight horror movie - it wants to fall into that nebulous genre labeled the "horror comedy". That's where blood, gore, and monsters are mixed in a witch's brew with self-parody and one-liners. The idea is that we're supposed to laugh one moment and shiver the next. Unfortunately, the average horror comedy causes more cringing than anything else. And, when I say "cringing", I mean from acute embarrassment, not from terror. That's the kind of movie that Thirteen Ghosts is. There are laughs to be had - some of them are even intentional (like the lawyer joke and the ongoing commentary from the "token" black character) - but not enough to overcome 90 minutes of tedium.
Admittedly, one shouldn't go into a horror movie expecting a literate plot. The formula demands a lot of running around, characters consistently and repeatedly doing dumb things, and a mounting body count. A good horror movie will offer more (although not always that much more). Thirteen Ghosts throws these basic elements on the screen, then connects the dots with a storyline that could have been the basis for a video game. I'm not referring to a current, state-of-the-art, must-be-played-on-a-Pentium 4 game; I'm thinking of the kinds of things that were in vogue when Atari was still a giant in the industry. So, we get six characters (father, daughter, son, babysitter, psychic ghost-hunter, learned ghostbuster) trapped in a glass maze inside a haunted house where the walls keep shifting. Their mission: to avoid 12 ghosts and get out of the house alive before the Eye of Hell is opened. In general, the ghosts are invisible, but the house comes equipped with special goggles that allow our intrepid heroes to see these ghastly apparitions in all their gory.
It astounds me when a D-grade movie is able to attract an A-minus-grade cast. Strangely, the presence of good actors often works against a film of this ilk (much like the inclusion of Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer hurt What Lies Beneath). Matthew Lillard (the Scream guy) and Shannon Elizabeth (the American Pie exchange student) are at home in these campy surroundings. And Embeth Davidtz has done this sort of thing before (Army of Darkness). But what about respected names like Tony Shalhoub (Big Night) and F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus)? Although these two are trying to play down to the material, there's still a serious note to their performances, and it undermines some of the film's attempts at comedy.
Director Steve Beck, making his feature debut, pulls a lot of things out of his trick-or-treat bag. He steals from some notable sources, using the "shaky cam" of Evil Dead fame and the unseen attacker approach from A Nightmare on Elm Street. But it all doesn't add up - we still have too little laughter, too little suspense, and too much boredom. If Beck wanted a tense haunted house movie, he should have taken some pointers from Alien. If he wanted an effective horror comedy, he should have followed the Evil Dead/Evil Dead II blueprint, where the abject silliness of Three Stooges tributes counterbalance gallons of gore. (Imagine Bruce Campbell replacing Tony Shaloub - now that's groovy!) Unfortunately, Beck has wandered away from either of those paths, instead choosing (unfortunately) the worst route possible - a dead end.
© 2001 James Berardinelli