May 10, 2003

The other day I was at the movie theater and I stopped in front of a curious looking arcade machine that claimed to give electric shocks. It's a game, you see, you put your hands on two grips and the machine vibrates harder and harder to see just how much you can take before you let go.

Thir13n Ghosts does essentially the same thing to your eyes and ears. It's an endurance test to see how much you can take before you simply give up. That goes for the special effects and the script. I didn't give up and I can tell you that what comes at the end was not a reward for my effort.

The movie is a remake of a forgotten William Castle picture and it's just about as stupid but nowhere near as much fun. It stars the always-reliable Tony Shaloub (Jeebs of Men in Black) as Arthur Kriticos a widower with two kids who is having trouble paying the bills. Quicker then you can say, "I'm having trouble paying the bills" he is visited by a lawyer who tells him that his late uncle has left him a house. So Arthur, his two kids and their nanny (rap star Rah Digga) head out to the house and are all but ready to move in.

The reasons that they are ready to move into this place are beyond me. The interior of the house looks like the inside of a clock with huge gears and lots and lots of glass (I was clenching my teeth waiting for someone to say "I don't do windows" and, believe me, I didn't have to clench for very long.) It takes the characters about an hour to figure out that the house is haunted (an hour longer then it takes us) despite the fact that a very hopped-up Matthew Lillard has been screeching this information incessantly ever since they got to the front door. No sooner does it finally get through their thick skulls then - BAM! - The house locks them in.

A haunted house movie generally sets rules in place but why does the movie insist on including every single stock character? Why? Because when they die off they can get killed in the order of the Hollywood Celebrity Food Chain, i.e. if you're famous, you'll make it to the end, if you're a little famous you'll get iced just before the ending, if you're an unknown then you're fishfood, and if you're playing a lawyer then you're toast no matter how famous you are.

The movie features the usual assortment: the father, the babalicous daughter (Shannon Elizabeth, whose talent suggests that her star will fall the minute that her photogenic looks are no longer marketable), a wise-cracking kid, the wise-cracking African-American, the lawyer, and the nervous guy who spells everything out but isn't taken seriously because he's just . . . so gosh darn nervous.

My favorite character is Embeth Davidtz who plays a stock character that no convoluted horror movie could do without. I like to call her Our Lady of Perpetual Exposition since her sole function is to announce that she is the world's foremost expert on the current crises and then keep explaining as developments keep turning up. What I don't understand is why this character never seems to want to spill everything right up front and save a few bodies. She's the type who is always explaining that the fail-safe has failed after it has failed.

Anyway, she sets in motion a rather complicated set of rules not the least of which is that 12 ghosts are locked in the basement in a containment unit. She unfortunately never has time to explain the containment unit or the reason behind the ghostly apparitions because every time she gets close to having to come up with an answer, the movie crashes and bangs, hoping that we all have short attention spans.

The one rule that is clear is that the characters can only see the ghosts when they put on special glasses. I don't understand why they put on the special glasses since the ghosts only seem to attack those who are wearing them. Just take off the glasses and go make some tea.

Another unanswered question comes from some muddled logic about how the walls of the house have spells written on them that the ghosts can't cross. But wouldn't logic suggest that the ghosts must have found some way to cross the writing in order to get out of the basement? And since the family unscrews the walls and uses them as shields in the film's climax, would it be logical to assume that you could unscrew other walls that would lead to the outside? My endurance test is trying not to asking so many freakin' questions.

Is the movie scary? Let me put it this way, It is kinda sad when the most shocking thing in the movie is when someone curses in front of a child.