Movie Ratings
Last updated 9 July 2004
Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
I had no idea what this movie would be about (other than having
ghosts in it).
The movie turned out to be rather one-dimensional.
There were two characters who came off early as being heels in my
mind, and I don't think either of them were intended to be heels at
that point.
1) The first was the nanny. She just had really bad "go away heat"
much like Albert and the later years of X-Pac.
2) The other was the "ghosts rights" chick. I think early in the
film we were supposed to accept her as a babyface, but she (and her
Greenpeace partner who died in the opening scenes) were heels from
the start in my mind.
The idea of the house changing with all the gears and everything was
pretty cool, but it was really bogus that no one could ever find
anyone else, when the entire house is made of glass.
Some of the swerves didn't seem to really make sense:
1) Uncle Cyrus supposedly squandered all of his money, yet the
lawyer says his nephew Arthur will never have to worry about money
ever again. It eventually becomes apparent that he "squandered his
fortune" by building the house/machine, but it doesn't explain why
the nephew would never have to worry about money ever again (unless
the lawyer knew that the nephew was going to be sacrificed).
2) Uncle Cyrus appeared to have died in the opening scenes. The
only people who knew it was a work were the Greenpeace gal and
*maybe* the lawyer. Was the point of this just to lure the nephew
to the house to be sacrificed? IF so, couldn't the uncle just be
reported dead without having to go through the elaborate hoax in the
opening scene? It's not like they needed the ESP guy to be at the
house, too.
After watching the movie, I watched the special (where the idiots
kept harping on how revolutionary the director's idea was for seeing
things differently while wearing glasses (what, none of these people
ever watched "They Live" with Roddy Piper?)). They also went on and
on about how scary the movie was. WTF? I've seen scarier things in
the bottom of a box of cereal.
This tried to answer a few questions (No, Uncle Cyrus didn't kill
his nephew's wife by starting the fire himself) and brought up more
(Was the kid with the arrow through his head the first-born son of
Uncle Cyrus ?)
The casting for the daughter (Shannon Elizabeth as Kathy Kriticos)
seemed weird. It seemed like they were trying to pass her off as a
teenager, even though she turns 30 this year. And they get the hot
chick from American Pie and don't even use her in a nude scene?
Whatupwitdat?
Matthew Lillard did a good job as Dennis Rafkin (the ESP guy).
Other than this and being a spot-on Shaggy in last year's Scooby Doo
movie, I haven't seen him in anything, but he did a great job in
both of these movies. Wait a minute. He was apparently in the
movie Hackers, which I just re-watched a couple months ago. Guess
I'm not sure which character he was in that movie. [He was the tall guy with four pig tails; he did a good job in that movie as well.]
Then I started watching it again with commentary on. They had three
people doing commentary, but none of them were actors in the film,
so they spent the entire time talking about lighting, camera angles,
and the rubber suits that were made for the ghosts. That got boring
after about fifteen minutes, so I gave up.
After all that, I guess I wouldn't recommend this film. I give it a
"3.8" on the 1 to 10 scale.
The DVD itself was in decent condition. There was less than a
minute of lost material due to damaged disc, which is probably the
third best disc I've ever got from NetFlix.
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