Cyrus Kriticos is a man with an obsession. He marches a group of men into a scrap yard, cars piled high on every side the men set up equipment and move a large tanker into position. Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham - Star Trek: Insurrection, Scarface) follows behind in a vintage car, stepping out of the car he brings along with him the extremely jittery Dennis Rafkin (Matthew Lillard – the really annoying one in Scream) and orders him to do his job. Rafkin has psychic abilities and is able to sense ghosts, he finds them for Cyrus so that they can then be captured for some unknown purpose. As they get ready to find whatever dwells in this scrap yard, two of Cyrus’ men drag a man and a woman to see him, two trespassers who babble about what he’s doing is wrong before he has them removed. The men all wear special glasses that will allow them to see whatever ghost might be in the area. The ghost is detected and a trap is set, the centre of it being a large, odd glass box covered in Latin. The tanker is used to spray blood about the yard, and soon enough a large, lumbering figure can be seen in short snatches, as it pursues the men Kriticos has sent, attacking them and sending towers of crushed cars crashing to the ground. Eventually one man stumbles into the box, the ghost follows and the box closes, sealing him inside. Rafkin stumbles away, shocked and horrified at what he has seen, encountering the trespassers – the man dead in the woman’s arms, and then encountering Cyrus himself – also killed in the melee.

Well this film has come under a lot of criticism, but quite frankly just what were these people expecting? Thirteen Ghosts is just good, dumb fun on a good-sized budget. The production values are impressively high and put to good use, the bizarre Kriticos house is a pretty impressive by itself. Actually only about one and a half floors in real life, it has a unique look to it, all the glass and modern design combined sliding doors with large cogs and gears, it looked great. The basement where the ghosts were contained was design-wise very similar to the rest with all the glass, but is more closed in and the lighting and ambient noises use totally change the atmosphere into a creepy and menacing place far removed from the brightly lit and more open rooms upstairs. The house is probably the most impressive aspect of the film, though its pretty difficult to believe anybody could actually live there. I also enjoyed the cast too, I really like Tony Shalhoub, he portrays the ‘everyman’ sort of character well, and I felt his performance suited the film perfectly, he’s easy for the audience to associate with and so creates the sympathy his character needed. Matthew Lillard was well cast, I know some people find him deeply annoying but I think that’s the whole point, this film puts him into situations where they really needed a high-strung over the top performance and Lillard handles them expertly, and I found his character very likeable, definitely one of the stand-out roles in the film with some nice little touches. Shannon Elizabeth was, sorry Shannon fans, pretty much kept in the background for a lot of the film and wasn’t given much to do except for a rather silly and unnecessary near-disrobing by one of the ghosts. The film didn’t really lose out on her merely being on the periphery, as her character wasn’t particularly interesting anyway. Maggie was the standard black character in a horror movie, she was sassy! She was entertaining though and got some good lines from time to time, she wasn’t just sassy for the sake of it. Also F. Murray Abraham put in a good villainous performance as you’d expect, though you don’t get nearly as much of him as I would have liked.

This is the biggest problem for me, I don’t think any part of this film truly got the attention it needed. First off, there are twelve main ghosts in the film, all with their own unique identities and looks, in theory all serving different purposes. The problem is that none of them are really gone into in great detail, a couple of them are totally wasted, which seems a damn shame considering the obvious work that went into their design and the hours of make-up the people who portrayed them needed. Only a couple of the ghosts really get more than two or three moments of screen time and it’s a disappointment, some of these characters are novel and interesting and could have carried a film by themselves without having to share the spotlight with nine or ten others. The house itself, a great piece of design and very well made, isn’t really exploited as much as it could have been and it doesn’t really help that they set so much of the film in the basement, it starts to look like they’re running up and down the same stretch of corridor over and over again after a while. This lack of real emphasis on the ghosts, or anything else, leads to a rather large problem – this film just isn’t scary. There was one scene that made me jump with a very cheap jump cut, but this film just didn’t unnerve me or shock me at all. This isn’t merely a case of my becoming jaded by watching so many horror movies, if its scary it’ll scare me, but Thirteen Ghosts just isn’t. The director Steve Beck described the film on the DVD commentary track as a “Halloween party on a rollercoaster” but really, its more like a cheap ghost train ride that is more entertaining due to its lack of scares, than to its genuine thrills. Don’t get me wrong, the film has some great scenes involving the ghosts, one of my favourites being Rafkin trying to show Maggie one of the ghosts and it repeatedly scares him, they’re charming enough but they’re just not scary.

This film is one of unrealised potential. All these novel ghost designs left sadly unexplained and under-used, an excellent collection of sets that don’t really get used to their full potential, and this all adds up to a lacklustre plot which felt just a little bit rushed. Having said that, its still a lot of fun if you just let those failings go. The acting is more than reasonable, Matthew Lillard really stood out for me, I know a lot of people find him annoying but he was a great fit in this film and had some great scenes that I wouldn’t want to spoil for those yet to see it. The ghosts, what you see of them, are a nasty bunch and are effective on the few occasions where they’re allowed to show their stuff, but there’s just not enough! A waste of ideas where given more time to breathe, could have created a superior film, though its still entertaining enough for a rental at the very least.