Thirteen Ghosts is a 2001 American horror film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 directed

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 by Steve Beck. It is a remake

Remake

A remake is a piece of media based primarily on an earlier work of the same medium.-Film:The term "remake" is generally used in reference to a movie which uses an earlier movie as the main source material, rather than in reference to a second, later movie based on the same source...

 of the 1960 film

1960 in film

The year 1960 in film involved some significant events, with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho the top-grossing release in the U.S.-Events:* April 20 - for the first time since coming home from military service in Germany, Elvis Presley returns to Hollywood, California to film G.I...

 of the same name by William Castle

William Castle

William Castle was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Castle was known for directing films with many gimmicks which were ambitiously promoted, despite being reasonably low budget B-movies....

. It follows the remake

House on Haunted Hill (1999 film)

House on Haunted Hill is a 1999 American horror film, directed by William Malone and starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter and Jeffrey Combs. It also includes a cameo appearance by Peter Graves...

 of another one of Castle's films, House on Haunted Hill

House on Haunted Hill

House on Haunted Hill is a 1959 American B movie horror film from Allied Artists. It was directed by William Castle, written by Robb White, and starring Vincent Price as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. He and his fourth wife, Annabelle, have invited five people to the house for a "Haunted...

.

Plot

Ghost hunter Cyrus Kriticos (F. Murray Abraham

F. Murray Abraham

Fahrid Murray Abraham is an American actor. He became known during the 1980s after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. He has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men and Scarface...

) and his psychic

Psychic

A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...

 assistant Dennis Rafkin (Matthew Lillard

Matthew Lillard

Matthew Lyn Lillard is an American actor and producer. He is best known for his roles as Stu Macher in Scream, Stevo in SLC Punk , and Shaggy Rogers in the Scooby-Doo film series and the Animated reboot series.-Early life:Lillard was born in Lansing, Michigan, and grew up in Tustin, California...

) lead a team on a mission to capture a spirit, called the Juggernaut, in a junkyard. Several of the men are killed during the ensuing fight, including Cyrus himself. However, the team is able to catch the ghost. Cyrus' nephew, Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub

Tony Shalhoub

Anthony Marcus "Tony" Shalhoub is an American actor of Lebanese descent. His television work includes the roles of Antonio Scarpacci on Wings and sleuth Adrian Monk on the TV series Monk. He has won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for his work in Monk...

), a widower, is informed by Cyrus' estate lawyer Ben Moss (JR Bourne) that he has inherited a mansion. Financially insecure, Arthur decides to move into the mansion with his two children, Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth

Shannon Elizabeth

Shannon Elizabeth is an American actress and former fashion model. Elizabeth is well known for her roles in comedy films such as Scary Movie, American Pie, and Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back. She is also well known for her work in horror films such as Thirteen Ghosts, Cursed, and Night of the Demons...

) and Bobby (Alec Roberts) and their nanny Maggie (Rah Digga

Rah Digga

Rah Digga is an American rapper. Well known as a long time member of the Flipmode Squad, a hip hop group led by Busta Rhymes, she parted ways amicably with the group in 2007. She has been called "one of rap's most prominent women MCs" by Allmusic and "one of hip-hop's most skilled female MCs" in...

).

Dennis Rafkin, disguised as a power company employee, meets the family and Moss as they tour the mansion. The residence is made almost entirely of glass walls and floor with Latin phrases etched on them. After going in the basement and seeing the several ghosts he helped capture, Dennis frantically runs upstairs to warn Arthur that there are 12 violent ghosts imprisoned in the house, held captive. Moss slips away to collect his payment, but upon taking the briefcase he activates a mechanism that seals the entrance to the home and begins to release the ghosts one-by-one. The Angry Princess is the first ghost to be released, and advances menacingly towards Moss for remarking "nice tits," at her earlier. Moss attempts to apologize to her, but is sliced in half when two doors close through him.

Bobby disappears after getting separated from Maggie and is lured into the basement by the Bound Woman, recently released along with several other ghosts. Bobby then encounters two other ghosts, the Torso and the Withered Lover, who is revealed to be the ghost of his dead mother, Jean. He then sees his supposedly dead great-uncle, Cyrus, behind him and is attacked by him.

When the others split up and search the basement for Bobby, despite Dennis's protests, the psychic manages to use a pair of spectral viewers - which allow the wearer to see into the supernatural realm - to convince Maggie of the ghosts by using them to show her the Hammer in its cell. Shortly after, Dennis discovers that the Jackal has been released, meaning they are in grave danger.

Meanwhile, Kathy puts on a pair of the spectral viewers she took from the bathroom earlier, and sees the Jackal, who then proceeds to viciously attack her and (possibly) attempt to rape her. However, she and Arthur are saved from the Jackal by Kalina Oretzia (Embeth Davidtz

Embeth Davidtz

Embeth Jean Davidtz is an American-born actress who spent much of her early life in South Africa.-Early life:Davidtz was born in Lafayette, Indiana, while her father was studying chemical engineering at Purdue University. Her parents, John and Jean, later moved to Trenton, New Jersey, and then...

), a spirit liberator, who has snuck into the house and is attempting to free the ghosts. Kalina then uses Kathy's (who has mysteriously disappeared) spectral viewers to show the Jackal to Arthur, and explains that the home is actually a machine built by Cyrus, based on a design in a 15th century book written by the astrologer Basileus while he was possessed by the Devil. The machine is powered by the spirits of 12 ghosts based on the "Black Zodiac," and opens the "Ocularis Infernum" (Eye of Hell) that allows its user to see everything in the past, present and future, thus making the user the most powerful being on earth. Dennis also reveals that Jean is the Withered Lover, enraging Arthur. Kalina goes on to tell Arthur that his children are in grave danger, and the only way to ensure their successful return is for Arthur to sacrifice himself to become the 13th ghost - a failsafe ghost created out of an act of pure love, which would destroy the machine.

While Maggie and Kalina get to the library, Arthur and Dennis attempt to find the kids, using a glass wall as a shield against the ghosts' attacks. However, when the Juggernaut is released as the final ghost and comes after the two men along with the Hammer, Dennis decides to sacrifice himself and traps Arthur behind the glass wall in a corner. Dennis, however, is no match for the two ghosts and Arthur watches helplessly as the Juggernaut brutally finishes the psychic off, bending him in half on a nearby pole.

Meanwhile, Cyrus is revealed to be alive, having faked his death in order to lure Arthur to the house and Kalina is his secret partner and lover. Cyrus has orchestrated the abduction of Kathy and Bobby so that Arthur will become the 13th ghost, which will not stop the machine, as Kalina had claimed, but trigger its activation. Kalina says the only flaw in the plan is that Arthur will only sacrifice himself if his children are in jeopardy. When she balks at Cyrus's order to put the children in jeopardy, Cyrus traps her in a small chamber, crushing her to death between two walls. Cyrus plays a tape-recorded Latin chant to summon the ghosts to activate the machine.

Arthur arrives at the main hall of the house and witnesses all 12 ghosts standing around a rotating crest of metal rings, his children at the center. Arthur and Cyrus have a violent confrontation and Cyrus overpowers Arthur. Maggie begins to disrupt the machine's controls, breaking the chant and freeing the ghosts of their trance. The ghosts grab Cyrus and hurl him into the rings, slicing him to pieces. Dennis' ghost then appears, telling Arthur that it is not over and to go to his kids. Waiting for a break in the rings, Arthur safely leaps to his children. The machine continues to malfunction and the walls of the house shatter, freeing the ghosts. The ghost of Arthur's wife, Jean, appears before the family and tells them that she loves them before vanishing. Maggie is then seen wandering through the destroyed house, screaming that she quits.

The Ghosts

The first twelve of the thirteen ghosts that make up the fictional "Black Zodiac" each have their own unique back stories. Although these stories were not described in the film, the production and make-up teams explain their guidelines on the DVD. Cyrus narrates each ghost's back story. They also seem to increase in danger posed as their numbers increase.

• The First Born Son - The First Born Son is the ghost of Billy Michaels, a boy who loved Cowboy films. One day a neighbor found a real steel-tipped bow and arrow in his parents' closet. He challenged Billy to a duel, with Billy using a toy gun. However, his plaything was no match for the arrow, and he died when the neighbor shot it through the back of his head. In death, Billy is in his cowboy suit and holding a tomahawk, with the arrow still protruding from his head. His ghost whispers "I want to play" or "play with me."

• The Torso - The Torso is the ghost of a gambler called Jimmy "The Gambler" Gerald. One day he made a deal with a rich business man, and when he bet heavily on a boxing match and lost, he tried to renege his bet and slip out of town, and so sealed his fate. The mob and the winning boxer, to whom he owed money, caught up with Gambino and cut him into several pieces, wrapping them in cellophane and dumping the corpse into the ocean. His ghost is just his torso, trying to walk around on its hands, while his head lies nearby screaming within the cellophane.

• The Bound Woman - The Bound Woman is the ghost of Susan LeGrow, a girl with very rich and wealthy parents. Susan was born privileged and she had a penchant for dating one individual boy and cheating on him with another boy. This left a long trail of broken hearts. Susan’s senior year in high school she dated the star football player Chet Walters. On the night of her school prom, wherein Susan and Chet were named Prom Queen and King, respectively, Chet found Susan with another boy. The next morning the boy was found dead and Susan was missing, and two weeks later her body was found buried at the 50 yard line of the school football field. Chet was convicted and sentenced to death. Right before his execution he was quoted as saying “The bitch broke my heart so I broke her neck”. Her ghost is hanging suspended with her Prom dress on and Chet’s tie around her neck and her arms tied behind her back and she also has a twitch from when she was hung.

• The Withered Lover - The Withered Lover is Jean Kriticos, Arthur's wife. She was burned severely saving her family from a devastating house fire, and died of her wounds in the hospital. Her ghost initially appears in a hospital gown, hooked up to an IV pole and showing severe burns on her face, however, after the destruction of the machine, her ghost is wearing her normal clothes and her burns have vanished. Unlike the other ghosts, she is not a vengeful spirit, electing to help her family.

• The Torn Prince - The Torn Prince is the ghost of Royce Clayton, a gifted baseball star in high school, albeit with attitude issues and a superiority complex. In 1957 he was challenged by a greaser named Johnny to a drag race, but was killed as his car spun out of control and flipped over; the cause of the accident was a cut brake line. He was buried in a plot of earth that overlooked the baseball diamond. His ghost carries a baseball bat, and parts of his face and body are torn to shreds from when he was dragged under the car. His ghost also uses his bat as a powerful weapon and in his cell, he sits atop the upturned car which ended his life.

• The Angry Princess - The Angry Princess is the ghost of Dana Newman who had the natural beauty of a goddess but also had an inability to recognize it. By the time of her early 20’s, a string of abusive boyfriends fueled her low self-esteem and lead her in a downward spiral of self-loathing from which doctors struggled to save her. Her desperate search for perfection lead her to find employment with a plastic surgeon, where her wage was paid in nose jobs, breast implants and other procedures. Alone one night at the clinic, Dana tried to perform surgery on herself in a desperate attempt to remove an imperceivable imperfection on her face. However the unorthodox procedure went horribly wrong and she was left blind in one eye. She committed suicide in the bathtub by slashing herself to death with a butcher knife until her veins ran dry. When she was found people said she was as beautiful in death as she was in life. Her ghost is naked still holding the same knife she killed herself with, showing all the wounds. Her cell is covered in blood from where she cut all of the slits in her body and the blood from her veins.

• The Pilgrimess - The Pilgrimess is the ghost of Isabella Smith. In 1695 during colonial times Isabella sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in search for a warm comfortable home in New England, but the tight-knit townsfolk didn’t trust outsiders and isolated her from the town. But problems had begun not too long after she arrived: the town's livestock began to die mysteriously so the local preacher judgmentally accused her of witchcraft. She denied the claim but the town quickly turned against her. As more livestock started to fall ill, the preacher acquired a mysterious illness. The town rallied into a frenzy, cornering Isabella in a barn which they lit on fire. However, moments later Isabella miraculously crawled out still alive without a single burn on her skin, clothes, or hair. So instead she was sentenced to a slow death in the stocks where she stayed for weeks on end while children stoned her, women cursed her, and men spat on her. The humiliation grew far worse than the pain, so finally Isabella came to starvation. Her ghost is walking around with her hands still locked in the stocks covered with a few cobwebs and dry leaves.

• The Great Child & The Dire Mother - The Dire Mother is the ghost of Margaret Shelburne who was a shy woman who could never stand up for herself - partly because she rose to only a mere three feet in height ever since childhood. She was constantly stared at for her ridiculously small size and her own mother would sometimes dress her like a doll, but Margaret didn’t care as long as she found some perverse form of acceptance. A carnival barker named Jimbo placed her on display in his freak show. Margaret found this life terrible, and one night while sweeping the donkeys' pin she was raped by another carnival freak. Her son, Harold “The Great Child,” was born as a result of this rape, and eventually weighed over three hundred pounds (136 kg). Since infancy, Margaret spoiled Harold. As a result, he remained in diapers his entire life. While the circus workers teased and tormented them relentlessly, the two became very close and protective of each other. One day some circus workers decided to play a cruel joke on Harold by kidnapping his mother. Angered and enraged, he set out to look for his mother but when he found her she had died of suffocation in the sack she was kept in. Filled with anger, Harold violently chopped the workers to death with an axe, and kept their remains and placed them on display for paying customers to see. Later, when Jimbo found out what Harold had done, he ordered an angry mob to rip and tear Harold apart. Their ghosts are always together and The Great Child still holds the axe he used to kill the circus workers with. In the original script, their deaths were different. It's explained in the director's commentary on the DVD that their original deaths were that Harold suffocated on his own vomit and as a result fell onto his mother, thus suffocating her as well. It wasn't until later that this idea was disregarded as the directors felt it was too weak a character background. It is this story line though that explains why Harold has vomit all over his bib, and why his mother is feeding him in their cell.

• The Hammer - The Hammer is the ghost of a blacksmith, George Markley, who lived in a small town in the 1890s. He was wrongfully accused of stealing, and when threatened with exile, he refused to leave town. A gang led by his accuser hung his wife and children and burned their bodies; in revenge, George used his sledgehammer to beat the culprits to death. He was then subjected to a cruel form of frontier justice by the townsfolk, being chained to a tree and executed by having railroad spikes driven into his body with his own sledgehammer. As a final touch, they cut off his hand and attached the sledgehammer - handle and all - to the hand that was cut off. His ghost is seen with the railroad spikes protruding from his body and a sledgehammer for a left hand.

• The Jackal - The Jackal is the ghost of Ryan Kuhn. In 1887 Ryan was born to a prostitute. By the time of his mid or late-adult years, Ryan developed a sick insatiable taste for the female gender, and he began attacking prostitutes and stray women with the cunning of a wild animal. Feeling a desperate need of help, he committed himself to Borinwood Asylum. After years of imprisonment in a padded room, Ryan went insane, scratching at the walls so violently that his finger nails were torn completely off. The doctors kept him permanently bound in a strait-jacket and tying it tighter when he would act up causing his limbs to contort horribly. However, Ryan gnawed right through it, so the doctors stuck him in a dark basement cell and locked his head in a cage. There he grew to hate all mankind screaming madly and cowering whenever approached by people. When a fire broke out in the asylum everyone but Ryan escaped. His ghost is in his undone strait-jacket and his head locked in the half-way broken cage. If he encounters fire of any kind his ghost will disappear.

• The Juggernaut - The Juggernaut is the ghost of a serial killer named Horace "Breaker" Mahoney. Standing seven feet tall, he was of such grotesque height and appearance that everyone ostracized him as a child. His mother abandoned him at birth, so his father raised him, putting him to work in the junkyard crushing old cars. After his father died, Horace was left on his own, and soon went mad. He would pick up female hitchhikers on the road and drive them back to his junkyard, then tear them apart with his bare hands and feed them to his dogs. One day he picked up an undercover female police officer, who called for backup, bringing a SWAT team to surround the junkyard. Since close combat was impossible, the police instead struck the yard, and arrested the giant. However, Horace broke free from the cuffs, and three officers lost their lives. Quickly, five SWAT officers took out their guns and brought Horace down in a hail of bullets. When he finally went down, they shot an extra round of ammunition into him, "just to be safe." His ghost still shows bullet holes all over his clothing, and the round that finished him, in the center of his forehead. According to Dennis, Horace killed nine people when he was alive, and another thirty-one approx as a ghost, then many of Cyrus's assistants and Dennis himself.

• The Broken Heart - The thirteenth ghost would've been Arthur. He had to be alive to be sacrificed into the Eye of the Devil and then die to save his family, but the ghosts threw Cyrus into the Eye of the Devil instead, setting all twelve ghosts free.

Cast

• Tony Shalhoub
  Tony Shalhoub
  Anthony Marcus "Tony" Shalhoub is an American actor of Lebanese descent. His television work includes the roles of Antonio Scarpacci on Wings and sleuth Adrian Monk on the TV series Monk. He has won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for his work in Monk...
  
   as Arthur Kriticos
• Embeth Davidtz
  Embeth Davidtz
  Embeth Jean Davidtz is an American-born actress who spent much of her early life in South Africa.-Early life:Davidtz was born in Lafayette, Indiana, while her father was studying chemical engineering at Purdue University. Her parents, John and Jean, later moved to Trenton, New Jersey, and then...
  
   as Kalina Oretzia
• Matthew Lillard
  Matthew Lillard
  Matthew Lyn Lillard is an American actor and producer. He is best known for his roles as Stu Macher in Scream, Stevo in SLC Punk , and Shaggy Rogers in the Scooby-Doo film series and the Animated reboot series.-Early life:Lillard was born in Lansing, Michigan, and grew up in Tustin, California...
  
   as Dennis Rafkin
• Shannon Elizabeth
  Shannon Elizabeth
  Shannon Elizabeth is an American actress and former fashion model. Elizabeth is well known for her roles in comedy films such as Scary Movie, American Pie, and Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back. She is also well known for her work in horror films such as Thirteen Ghosts, Cursed, and Night of the Demons...
  
   as Kathy Kriticos
• Alec Roberts as Bobby Kriticos
• Rah Digga
  Rah Digga
  Rah Digga is an American rapper. Well known as a long time member of the Flipmode Squad, a hip hop group led by Busta Rhymes, she parted ways amicably with the group in 2007. She has been called "one of rap's most prominent women MCs" by Allmusic and "one of hip-hop's most skilled female MCs" in...
  
   as Maggie Bess
• F. Murray Abraham
  F. Murray Abraham
  Fahrid Murray Abraham is an American actor. He became known during the 1980s after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. He has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men and Scarface...
  
   as Cyrus Kriticos
• J.R. Bourne as Ben Moss
• Mikhael Speidel as Billy Michaels/The First Born Son
• Daniel Wesley as Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino/The Torso
• Laura Mennell
  Laura Mennell
  Laura Mennell is a Canadian actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles in Watchmen, Montana Sky, and the Emmy nominated Flight 93. Mennell currently co-stars on the Syfy television series Alphas...
  
   as Susan LeGrow/The Bound Woman
• Kathryn Anderson as Jean Kriticos/The Withered Lover
• Craig Olejnik
  Craig Olejnik
  Craig Olejnik is a Canadian actor. He is best known as the lead actor in the television series The Listener as Toby Logan, a paramedic with the power to read minds by hearing others' thoughts and seeing events that have happened to them from their point of view...
  
   as Royce Clayton/The Torn Prince
• Shawna Loyer as Dana Newman/The Angry Princess
• Xantha Radley as Isabella Smith/The Pilgrimess
• C. Ernst Harth
  C. Ernst Harth
  Cary Ernst Harth is a Canadian actor.Harth was born in Galt, Ontario, Canada. He got his first taste of acting in grade school when the drama club cast the school's largest child to play Santa in their Christmas pageant. Harth was just a kindergartner at the time...
  
   as Harold Shelburne/The Great Child
• Laurie Soper as Margaret Shelburne/The Dire Mother
• Herbert Duncanson as George Markley/The Hammer
• Shayne Wyler as Ryan Kuhn/The Jackal
• John DeSantis
  John DeSantis
  John DeSantis is a Canadian actor, perhaps best known as Lurch in the 1998–99 Fox Family production of The Addams Family, entitled The New Addams Family. This role was originally portrayed by Ted Cassidy. He is 206 cm tall. Because of his great height, he has been recognised as one of the...
  
   as Horace "Breaker" Mahoney/The Juggernaut (credited as John De Santis)

Reception

Reviews for the film were mostly negative, with Thirteen Ghosts garnering just 12% rating on review aggregator

Review aggregator

A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services . This system stores the reviews and then uses them for purposes such as: creating a website for users to view the reviews, selling information to third parties about consumer tendencies and creating databases for...

 Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

, with the consensus being "The production design is first rate, but 13 Ghosts is distinctly lacking in scares." Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

praised the production values saying, "The production is first-rate. The physical look of the picture is splendid." However, he criticized the story, lack of interesting characters, loud soundtrack, and poor editing. It is currently on his list of "Most Hated" films. In the US, the film opened ranking 2nd, making $15,165,355. It spent 10 weeks in the US box office, eventually making $41,867,960 domestically, and $68,467,960 worldwide.