Thir13en Ghosts

The movie is fine. It could have been so much more. It's all right there for the taking. They're remaking everything so why not remake something they could truly improve upon? So my review of this is that it's fun, but you'll feel that there is a lot of lost potential with this. I give it a 6, but it could've been a classic! That's the hardest part to take in when you think about the movie.

I watched this movie last night, and I thought it was entertaining. Sure, it's a B-movie and has its flaws - it's a bit silly, it's not particularly horrifying (although I must admit no movie has scared me in 10-15 years, and I've watched quite a lot of horror flicks), it's a tad silly (Ghostbusters meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer?). But as B-horror movies go, this one is entertaining for those who like films with supernatural phenomena and people dying in "imaginative" ways. Actually, Thir13en Ghosts reminded me of one of my favourite films, The Cube. But that's just the reason I can't give a lot of points for this movie - there are better B-movies with which to entertain yourself. Cube-films sum up the better parts of the film and dispense with boring love-issues. But then again, there are heck of a lot more crappier films than this, and it was funny enough for me to even buy it for five or so euros in case I came across this in a store.

What I most like is the idea and the kinda occult theme it has. Plot could have been better, but it offers good jumpscares and interesting ghosts, and it keeps you entertained.

"Thir13en Ghosts" does have a certain charm, if only for its silliness. Maybe there's nothing particularly special about a visual effects-laden movie in which a family inherits a haunted house, but the movie definitely has its moments, namely when the lawyer "splits". Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Shannon Elizabeth, Alec Roberts, Rah Digga and F. Murray Abraham are all able to turn in neat performances, even if the whole movie is pretty outlandish. I would recommend the original version more, but this one isn't bad. Perhaps its little more than a way to pass time, but a cool one at that. Acceptable for what it is.

It doesn't rely on too much splatter and it doesn't try to startle you out of your seat every two minutes so that immediately makes it better than the average horror flick. The ghosts were unusual enough to be memorable and there was not a lot of familiarity to the plot. This was very nearly an excellent film with a solid cast and very good effects. Five or ten more minutes of scary interaction between the ghosts and the children(if you can call Shannon Elizabeth a child) would have made the movie much better. I call it a near miss which is as good as most horror fils can aspire to.