13 Ghosts (2024)

13 Ghosts

Since “Armageddon,” the film “13 Ghosts of William Castle” is the noisiest movie. The theatre shakes while it crashes, bangs, shatters, screams, rumbles and roars with flash frames attacking the eyes balls. They should stop fighting the ghosts and have them attack subwoofer.

Literally, watching this movie becomes unbearable for one’s eyes and ears. It is a very bad thing for one’s visual perception and auditory faculties. Perhaps these filmmakers realized that their story was weak their characters were always trooping over the same ground and repeating themselves, they also knew that their choppy editing was visually incoherent so by turning up the volume they believed that maybe something was happening.

When there is just enough break in action to take a look at what is on screen we can see some truly fine art direction, special effects makeup and costumes. This film is all about technique rather than any real art in it. Most of it takes place inside a house that looks great for a horror setting; one of my favorite ever seen actually but it also has 12 ghosts who look like they could have been illustrations from Heavy Metal brought grotesquely to life (the thirteenth ghost being obviously key to everything).

Screenplay adapted from William Castle’s original film released in 1960 by little else but by itself tells about resurrecting dead Uncle Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham), whose studies into infernal tried out the medieval manuscript said to be dictated by Satan himself; he signed off his house to nephew Arthur (Tony Shalhoub), whose wife died tragically; now Arthur moves there with her son Bobby (Alec Roberts), daughter Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth) and Maggie the baby sitter (Rah Digga); moreover Arthur will be joined by ghostbuster Rafkin Matthew Lillard) as well as Kalina Embeth Davidtz who knows a lot about Uncle Cyrus, his studies, and how the house works.

And does it ever work. The outside steel panels go up and down giving way to glass container-cages; once, these contained 12 invisible ghosts that were required by Cyrus in order to oh well. What is truly interesting me is the fact that no one pays any attention to this house, which shrieks and has its walls moving even when really very terrible things are happening towards the end of the movie. It’s possible they read the script.

We learn that each shatterproof-glass cage bears “containment spells” to keep them confined. With special glasses that all characters have, you can see them too while we are watching ‘them’ in most often madly short shots leaving us unable to see them properly. I suppose a minor consolation for our side is going to be us having still pause whereas ’13 Ghosts’ will come out on DVD with glasses for actors only. To me, this film needs an additional button more than pause: delete.

‘This house as Kalina explains is actually some infernal device constructed by Satan himself and powered by dead people.’ Gear grind and levers crash up and down in a manner of speaking looking damn cool , wheels within wheels turning whilst it becomes apparent that this machine serves as an “Oculorus Infernum.” When someone asks what are those? They say it’s Latin after wards though but later we will know it’s eye of hell and oh well.”

When you have 12 ghosts, I suppose there are 12 containment cages; however, when little Bobby goes off down into the basement with them, he gets lost while his father, sister, nanny, medium and ghostbuster go up and down the same few corridors worrying about him and crying “Bobby! Bobby?” so many times that by the time Rafkin finally said what we were all thinking: “screw the kid! We’ve got to get out of this basement!”

The production values are first rate with Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis among the executive producers. It looks a million dollars. The screenplay is stillborn. The sound is cruelly loud. I hope it mostly plays at multiplexes because this is one you want to see from next door over.

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