Wednesday Horror: Thir13en Ghosts

Film: Thir13en Ghosts
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on The New Portable.

The things I do for this blog. Seriously. I’d seen Thir13en Ghosts before, and I knew it was a movie that I didn’t like much. It’s a shame, too, because there is a great deal of potential here. Part of that comes from the very loose association it has with the William Castle film 13 Ghosts. There’s also some really interesting ideas for those ghosts. The problem is that the execution isn’t that good. There’s a movie here that could be made, and be interesting, but it’s not this one. This could also be a very interesting miniseries, but that’s not this movie, either.

So we’re going to have two important events at the beginning of the film. In one, Cyrus Kriticos (F. Murray Abraham), with the assistance of Dennis Rafkin (Matthew Lillard) captures an extremely powerful ghost who seems to have the ability to kill people in the real world. During the attack, Cyrus himself is killed. We also get a little insight into the lives of other people in the Kriticos family. Specifically, we’re looking at Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub) and his wife and kids. His wife Jean (Kathryn Anderson), we learn, is killed in a fire.

Off Script: Ghost Ship

Films: Ghost Ship
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.

There are certain expectations with a horror movie. I know that there are going to be characters who do exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time, and that this is going to get them killed. Sometimes, a good filmmaker or a very good script can make that work. Most of the time, though, we in the audience look at the characters acting like idiots and realize that they’re acting that way because the story needs them to, or because it’s going to allow for them to be killed in spectacular fashion. No movie exemplifies this better than 2002’s Ghost Ship.

We start in 1962 aboard the ocean liner Antonia Graza where a party is going on. While members of the crew and passengers dance, we see sinister actions as a cable snaps across the dance floor, bisecting everyone but a single young girl. Yes, this is shown in graphic detail as blood starts to drip and people fall down in pieces. It’s seriously one of the best openings of a horror movie I’ve seen.