Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

Stylized appallingly as Thir13en Ghosts, I’d only ever heard bad things about this remake of the 1960 film (I haven’t seen that one, for what it’s worth). I went into it knowing next to nothing, other than the presence of Tony Shaloub and Matthew Lilliard - Monk and Shaggy, basically. 
It’s got a pretty standard starter plot, where a grieving family inherit a house and find out that, ooooh, it’s haunted. Thankfully there’s more to it than that - the ghosts have interesting stories implied and the house itself is more of a machine than anything. Lilliard gives a typically elastic performance, and it’s loads of fun. Oh Matthew Lilliard, you distinctive, distinctively mannered man. The whole movie is actually pretty self aware and self effacing, with a great balance of darkness and light. 
I’m always going to go easier on a movie that has a whole section of dialogue about hunting ghosts, to which someone else responds “goats?”. I loved the cheesy gore effects like you would not believe, but if you're looking for realism you should not be watching a movie containing vomitting ghosts and Psychic Specs. Of course, it doesn’t get forgiven for everything. It struggles to find the right pacing from the beginning, and one of the characters is a blatant, unfunny, racist stereotype in a way that is poorly constructed and lazily written. Thankfully, she at least survives the movie. They’re not that lazy.
Rating: 6.5/10 - Technically, this movie is lacking in lots of areas, but it makes up for it with the amount of fun it is for me. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hocus Pocus (1993)

Apparently  Hocus Pocus  is like…a big thing for people in my generation? I hadn’t seen it before, corrected by my friends on a decidedly eclectic movie night.  It’s - look, it’s something else. I think most of the love for it depends on a great deal of nostalgia, which was obviously absent from my viewing - I understood it, but I didn’t have childhood ties to it. It’s extraordinarily campy, which is fun, and Sarah Jessica Parker has truly never reached the same heights as she did in this. Bette Midler heaves the movie on her shoulders and gives it a heightened surreality that it needed to keep it from just veering into ridiculous unhinged levels beyond enjoyability. Any movie that relies this much on child acting is going to be hit and miss, though, and the teenagers are pretty rough to watch as they attempt to save the town from three returned-from-the-”dead” witches. There’s a younger sister character whose actress outdoes everyone else and is very nearly the highli...
Read more

200 Degrees (2017)

After a brief flirtation with serious pop cultural critique, I'm back to reviewing the horror movie rubbish that no one else has seen (and for good reason). What better way to settle into that niche than to watch one of the many hundreds of Saw copycats on the market? It's my own personal white noise. Saw itself is one of the most problematic and ideologically iffy film franchises around with one of the best first movies, and I'm unapologetically hyped for the next movie to come out. The ripoffs, however, are...something.  In my time watching blatant Saw ripoffs, I have seen some utter garbage. Even I, the most dedicated terrible movie watcher, could not sit through the monotony and bad acting of 2011's Vile . I struggled through 2006 Thai thriller 13 Beloved , even when it made me near gag, or 2014's Circle , even though I nearly fell asleep . Over time, I've enjoyed the occasional movie in this specific set up: I didn't mind the divisive Would You Ra...
Read more

2017 in Film: Favourites, Letdowns and Reflections

It's the end of the year, and the film snobs of the world are reflecting on their years in pop culture. As one of the gang - now with my very own bogus DMCA notice! - I figured I would jump on in. Of course, there are lots of caveats to that. I live in Australia, where several of the last quarter films with award potential have their wide release withheld til the next year. I don't go to previews, with the exception of the occasional rubbish horror movie, and I am not drawn to a lot of wide release movies. Dunkirk ? More like...um... done-urgh . A lot of it is to do with my exhaustion with male narratives and a lot of the industry's treatment of women and anything non white or heterosexual, both real and in fiction. I love the art form, but it's been a tough year for trying to avoid content that would make me extremely angry in a very real way. As mentioned previously, I haven't seen any new releases - it's been the busiest time of the year in my sector - so ...
Read more