You'd think that being a horror movie reviewer, I'd be all over the place with reviews this fine October, yeah sorry about that (see previous blog post). Halloween is my favorite holiday (obviously) and nothing gets me in the Halloween spirit better than watching crappy horror movies! Now, you'd think that to honor this amazing night I'd be reviewing a Halloween themed movie such as.......Halloween. But NO! Instead of being cliche, I'm gonna review one of the first horror movies I ever saw and surprise surprise, I saw it around Halloween when I was a little kid and it scared the piss out of me. That movie is Thir13en (screw that name, I'm just using 13 for the rest of this) Ghosts!
Let's take a trip back in time to the year 2001. Little Synester is 6 years old and is no stranger to horror. I mean, we're talking about the kid who threw the biggest temper tantrum of his life because his mom wouldn't let him stay up late and watch a late-night showing of Scream on TV. Scooby Doo was my favorite show and I was obsessed with anything supernatural and spooky. Naturally, when I saw a commercial for this movie one day, I was stoked. I begged my mother to take me to go see it, even though it was rated R and I was but a measly 6 year old. Eventually, my mom gave in and we went to see it on opening night, October 26th, her birthday by the way. She tells me that she only took me with because she wanted to see the movie just as badly, though I doubt that her hype levels were even half of mine that night. How did my mom get a 6 year old into an R rated movie, you ask? That's simple: we snuck in. She bought us two tickets for a showing of the first Harry Potter movie (which I had already seen like 5 times) and then we slinked into the 13 Ghosts theater instead. So we sit down in an almost empty theater (we lived in a very small town, nobody had the time or patience to go see a crappy horror movie) and by the end of the movie, I'm shaking in my seat. This movie terrified me. How could it not? I was only 6 and this movie had scares in it meant purely for adults. But the real question is, did it hold up? Did it still haunt me for years afterwards like Gremlins did? Nope. I rewatched it multiple times since that day and each time I saw it, it only got less and less scary. I chalk that up to it being a total piece of cow dookie. That ends story time, let's get into the plot.
This is the probably the only movie you'll ever see with both Tony Shaloub (of Monk fame) and Shannon Elizabeth (of too many horror movies to count) in leading roles. The plot goes as follows: Tony Shaloub inherits a spooky mansion from his relative, which is already a huge red flag, but Monk is nearly broke, so he has no choice but to take the house, which is made entirely of glass.
Wait a minute...
Monk's wife died in a fire a long time ago and his family needs a new house to live in, so they accept the inheritance. The person who gives them a tour of the house is a ghost hunter named Dennis, who tells them that the house is home to 12 angry ghosts locked up in the basement and the glass walls are actually magic sealing spells that hold the ghosts inside. Now, any sane person would be like, screw that I'm outta here, but this is a horror movie full of white people and we all know that white people have no common sense in these types of scenarios. Think the movie is stupid so far? Well, it's about to go off the deep end. Dennis gives the family these special glasses that let you see the ghosts while you're wearing them and for the rest of the movie, all of the actors are walking around with these retarded white goggles on their head.
Hurrrrrr
Then the rest of the movie happens and I kid you not, literally 75% of this movie is just people splitting up and exploring the house by themselves like idiots and running into the ghosts. That's it. Now, that would be fine if any of that was scary, but no, it's all cheap jump scares and suspense-less hall wandering. The last part of the movie is when Monk finds out that the house is actually a machine built by a dead (but not really dead) ghost hunter that would let him see into the future when completed and the best part? It doesn't run on AAA batteries or solar power, but instead? Ghosts. 13 of them to be exact, and Monk is supposed to be the last one. The only problem is that Monk's heart is pure and good and the machine needs a black heart full of hatred and bad stuff to be complete. No wait, it gets better. If Monk kills himself inside of the machine, his goodie two shoes heart will destroy the machine and free all of the ghosts. I'll leave it up to you to decide what happens in the end if you haven't already seen this movie. Spoiler alert, Monk dies.
He's not alive anymore, so he can't be OCD about how his blood splatters aren't symmetrical.
I can't believe I was ever scared of this movie. It's just a giant mess. That's what happens when you try to remake a 60's classic horror movie by William Castle and attempt to put a modern spin on it. The same thing happened with House On Haunted Hill (which I'll get to eventually, I promise, I've got plenty to say about that atrocity). The plot is utterly ridiculous, especially with those stupid glasses. I mean, what's stopping someone from just taking a giant rock and breaking one of the glass magic sealing walls and freeing all of the ghosts? The spooky mansion setting has been done a million times and making the walls glass doesn't help at all.
The acting is alright, I guess. Tony Shaloub does okay, same with Shannon Elizabeth. The others are pretty forgettable and contribute almost nothing to the plot besides being ghost bait.
The one good thing I have to say about this movie is that the ghosts look fantastic. They're all really creepy-looking, and since they all have distinct characteristics, it's easy to tell them apart, which is good because a lot of generic spooky ghost movies will just cram in a bunch of ghosts that all look similar. The scariest is of course, The Jackal. The makeup is on point here and it reminds me a lot of Regan from The Exorcist.
All we need now is a crucifix and a bucket for me to puke into.
But to me, the creepiest ghost is without a doubt The Torso. You only see it once in the entire movie and all it is is just a bloody torso wrapped in plastic that slowly walks on its arms. It's extremely unnerving and I just love it.
Looks like he won't be getting a-HEAD in life, huh?
Overall, this movie had some potential to be decent, but in the end it's just a disaster. They could have done so much more with the different ghosts, only about 6 of the 12 ghosts actually do something. The others just sit in their cells in the basement, looking menacing. It's just such a waste. I think this movie would have been much better off as maybe a web series or a tv show, just a regular length season of 13 episodes, with each episode telling a detailed story about the origins and lives of each of the ghosts. Instead, we got all of them mashed up together, fighting with each other for screen time in an hour and a half long film that nobody liked. This movie is still somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me because of the history I have with it and since I like the ghosts' designs so much, but I'm probably the only person in existence that could find anything enjoyable from this garbage. I give Thir13en (ugh) Ghosts 2 glass houses out of a possible 10. It's worth at least one viewing, at least to see those awesome ghosts, but just keep in mind that the ghosts are the only decent thing about this film.
