Welcome back to “Thursday Night Horror!” In this article, I take a look at “Thirteen Ghosts” from 2001. Now, even though this movie is 25 years old, if you haven’t seen and want to avoid SPOILERS, then leave now and go watch the movie first.
As always, if you don’t care about spoilers or you’ve already seen the movie, then I hope you enjoy the read!
“Thirteen Ghosts” is a remake of the 1960 William Castle production, “13 Ghosts”. The movie is about a family that inherits a mansion from a long-lost relative only to discover that it is made completely of glass and filled with ghosts. When the movie came out in 2001, it came out to very little fanfare and negative reviews.
To be honest, when I first watched the movie, I thought it was alright but did quickly dismiss it myself. I didn’t think about it for years until I noticed that it had grown a nice little cult following. Every once in a while, I would see a post from someone talking about how it was an underrated movie and should be given a second chance.
In 2013, I got back into the horror genre in a big bad way after seeing “The Conjuring”. I had pushed the horror genre to the side in the 2000s due to all the remakes and reboots that were coming out. When I got back into the genre, that included making up for films I had missed while I was turning my nose up to horror films and revisiting older horror films that I hadn’t seen in awhile.
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| Tony Shalhoub and Shannon Elizabeth star in "Thirteen Ghosts"! |
Eventually, I got back around to “Thirteen Ghosts”. After I rewatched it, I must admit that I had a much better reception to it than the first go around. I quickly noted that the production of the film was top notch with expert-level production design.
That actually may have been one of my problems with the movie when I initially saw it. With newer HD cameras, horror films were starting to look glossy and clean. I think some part of me always wants a horror film to be down and dirty with a grainy texture to match the dark stories being told.
I do like that the characters have to wear specialized glasses in order to see the ghosts. That’s a good nod to the “Illusion-O” glasses that Castle utilized in the original “13 Ghosts”.
Castle loved coming up with various gimmicks for the audience to interact with during the film they were watching. For “13 Ghosts”, during the movie, the cast and set would turn blue and the ghosts would be red. The audience had to put on red glasses in order to see the ghosts and blue glasses in order to make them disappear.
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| Several ghosts haunt the Kriticos mansion in "Thirteen Ghosts"! |
Another aspect of this newer version of the movie that I liked was the variety of ghosts. Again, the production of the movie is great and they spared no expense on the ghosts as well.
Now, admittedly, the scare factor here is another flaw of the movie. While there are definitely some scares that are effective, the movie is not overwhelmingly scary and since the tone of the movie is also not consistently eerie, the movie does lose some points in the scare category.
However, the cast is fun to watch and I do disagree with other critics who said that the characters were not memorable. Tony Shalhoub is great as Arthur, the family man and widower who inherited the house. Matthew Lillard is also great as the tortured Dennis Rafkin, the former assistant to Cyrus Kriticos, Arthur’s uncle who gave him the mansion.
Speaking of Cyrus, it comes as no surprise that he’s not really dead as it appears he is killed during the opening of the movie. He is also the big bad of the movie, more than the ghosts themselves. He is played to villainous perfection by F. Murray Abraham. When you have someone like Abraham at the helm of a character, you know that character isn’t gonna just be in the first few minutes of the movie.
So, is the movie perfect? No. It may still have a bit too much polish to it and the scare factor is impacted. However, a solid cast, some impressive ghost designs, and a good villain do make this the one thing that film needs to be overall: a fun time.
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