Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

Movie: Thirteen Ghosts (2001), directed by Steve Beck

Watched on: HBO Max

Ran: 7.22 miles, 9’13”/mile, 01:06:39 (recovery run)

 

Ah, the early 2000s; a magical time when remakes of old horror films swept majestically across the plain! I’m always a little blue on the day after Halloween, so I was looking for something to watch that would be the horror movie equivalent of comfort food—something you know is pretty awful but you love it anyway and it always feels like home. Imagine my surprise and delight, then, at scrolling listlessly through HBO Max’s horror section and stumbling upon Thirteen Ghosts! I’d been looking for that very movie for ages and had my hopes dashed time and again, but here it was, ready and waiting to be devoured like the trashiest microwave burrito that, for reasons you will never fathom, tastes like a hug from mom. 

 

Thirteen Ghosts, for the uninitiated, is Dark Castle’s second horror remake, following hard upon 1999’s House on Haunted Hill. This sophomore effort is a new take on William Castle’s 1960 film 13 Ghosts, which I admit I have not seen, though I am led to believe that it bears little resemblance beyond having a big house, a dude named Cyrus, and, um, 13 ghosts (but don’t hold me to that). What I can tell you with the authority of experience is that Thirteen Ghosts is not a very good film, and I love it—not because it’s not very good, and not despite that fact, either; its quality somehow seems to have no bearing whatsoever on my affection for its problematic little soul.

 

The movie starts with a bang: Cyrus Kriticos is a filthy-rich and megalomaniacal ghost hunter out to expand his collection, with the reluctant mercenary help of psychic Dennis Rafkin. They’ve brought some sort of paranormal SWAT team to a junkyard and are spraying a TRUCKFUL OF BLOOD all over everything as bait for the ghost of a serial killer. Needless to say, everything goes hilariously wrong, assuming you find body parts flying every which way to be hilarious, which, of course you do. The ghost is eventually captured, but not before Cyrus takes it in the neck.

 

Cut over to Arthur Kriticos, a schoolteacher whose life is not going super-great; his house recently burned down, and he lost his wife and everything they owned. Now he’s struggling to raise their two kids Kathy and Bobby in a tiny apartment on his own, with the arguable help of a sassy nanny named Maggie who can’t cook—and if you think that sounds like the premise of a heartwarming ‘90s family sitcom, you’re not wrong. But look, here comes a slimy lawyer with Uncle Cyrus’s video will; Cyrus has left Arthur his Crazy Millionaire Glass House in the Middle of Nowhere! This family’s troubles are over!

 

Or they would be, if it weren’t for the fact that the Crazy Glass House is actually a diabolical machine that is using the 12 archetypal ghosts trapped in the basement to open the Eye of Hell. Ain’t it always the way? So now the family is trapped inside with Dennis (who lied his way in to try and find the money Cyrus owed him), a bleeding-heart ghost liberator named Kalina, and a dozen mostly-murderous ghosts who are being systematically set free from their basement cells as the Crazy Glass House does its whole hell-eye-opening thing. Cue lots of running from killer ghosts that humans can only see through special glasses, a surprise guest or three, a running theme of self-sacrifice, a good ol’ double-cross, and a heaping helping of Hollywood-brand Love Conquers All.

 

Sounds dumb, you say? You’re not wrong, but there’s a reason the term “dumb fun” is a thing, and Thirteen Ghosts sprays a truckful of THAT all over everything, too. There’s plenty of violence and splatter (bodies getting torn to shreds, transected coronally, crushed flat on-camera, etc.), but most of it is weirdly sanitary, due to what I’m pretty sure is a near-exclusive use of CGI effects, many of which have not aged well, which only adds to the experience. And with a copyright year of 2001, this film is still channeling Big ’90s Energy, so the inclusion of a sassy Black nanny as comic relief among the dramatis personae was deemed “acceptable representation,” especially because there’s a perfectly fine but tonally jarring rap track (by Rah Digga, who plays Maggie) played over the closing credits.

 

Moreover, since Thirteen Ghosts is a Hollywood flick, you’ve got some recognizable cast members traipsing their way through a nonsensical script, including Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham—I know, right?—as Cyrus, Tony Shalhoub as Arthur, Matthew Lillard as Dennis, and Shannon Elizabeth as Kathy; most people know her as Nadia from American Pie, but to me she will always be Jill from Jack Frost, one of the first true horror-schlockfests I ever saw, and so she occupies a special place in my heart.

 

Look, it ain’t high art, but if you’re looking for something to grin at while you eat too much popcorn, for my money you could do a lot worse. Thirteen Ghosts is neither good nor so bad it merits watching for that reason, either, but its cast, its eye candy, and its clueless charm somehow brew up a fair bit of entertainment in a near-vacuum of actual quality, and that’s no mean feat. I can’t in good conscience rate it any higher than two-and-a-half bloody severed feet, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen it a zillion times. And I’ll probably see it a zillion more.