Thirteen Ghosts

Watched this last weekend with Alex and his girlfriend, because they wanted a scary movie night. Except we ended up watching this and Clue, which is not particularly scary. It's weird, because on the one hand, I'm positive I've never watched this movie the whole way through, but on the other, I feel certain I wrote a review of it on here before? Strange.

So, grieving widower (Tony Shaloub) inherits bizarre house from dead uncle, takes his two kids and the nanny to check it out. Bizarre house is full of angry ghosts, family is trapped inside with unhappy psychic (Matthew Lillard) that worked for the dead uncle.

Alex was disappointed, because he hadn't watched this in years, and he remembered being really scared when he first saw it. His girlfriend, who had never seen it before, said it wasn't bad, even if she could not believe anyone would willing go inside a house that looked like that. Fair point. I think we all eventually agreed the movie is trash, but fun trash.

I don't entirely understand why the walls of the place need to move, rather than just having them in the configuration they need to be in right from the start, but I assume there's some reasoning behind it. Most of the ghosts designs are cool, even if I chuckle at how Matthew Lillard's character treats them like angry dogs sometimes. They keep meeting them in hallways, and he keeps telling the other characters to slowly back away. Does he think ghosts' vision is based on motion, like the T-rex? Because that does not appear to be the case. I guess he could think it's just a smarter approach than running screaming full-tilt in the other direction, but he doesn't act like the kind of person who would take that sort of measured approach. Too spastic.

Of the two surprises that come at pretty much the same time late in the movie, one actually did surprise me, and the other didn't. The character that wasn't dead after all? I remembered that from some earlier partial viewing. The character that's not what they say? That one surprised me. Probably shouldn't have, but oh well.

Shaloub's character is dealing with a lot of guilt for not going back into their burning home after his wife, and that plays into the whole movie. His not wanting either kid to wander out of sight too much, and once they have, being focused only on getting the two of them safely away. So he's set up to think he's going to have to sacrifice himself to save them. The movie never says it right out, but there's the idea that if he does that, well, what then for his kids? Now they've lost both parents in 6 months. Dying for them is all very well and good, but actually being there for them would be better.