Can I ask a favor? Attend a dinner with your eyes on the original theatrical poster of the 2001 horror remake Thirt13 in Ghosts.
Give him your first impressions. Aggressively eye-catching photoshop? A color palette that literally hurts your eyes? Not one, but two cracked slogans? This infrequent “crushed number in the title” who just shouts “nervousness”? A lot to go, isn’t it? I sense that if you want a moment to go to bed …
… we welcome the return! And I’m sorry if it makes you fall off your ass, but I’m here to tell you that this is all good, not bad. To be globally general for a while: our new “critically acclaimed horror space” (think A24) has a tendency to condition us that is less. This effective genre cinema is aimed at the author, and the movements made by the authors cross the line between invisible classicism and stylistically competent invention that, however, fits into a charming and prestigious pocket. That the scares, scenarios and iconography of a film should be clean, intentional and deliberate. As such, there would possibly be a tendency to look at the recent beyond – in this case, the “presumed” horror scene of the 2000s – with mockery, with ironic detachment, with the feeling that our horror cinema and tastes have evolved.
From this point of view, see Thir13en Ghosts (yes, I use the number verbiage in the title; it deserves my respect) you will have to feel, like your poster, at the most productive, picturesque and, at worst, painful. But if we readjust our point of view, if we put, say, new glasses that allow us to see things that we normally cannot see, we will locate an animated, lively, exclusive and totally intentional experience. A film comprising a One Perfect Shot – in a position of deification of prestigious classicism – and a visual taste in a position to strike that the maximum is not willing to load those days. A film that pushes us aside through the house of laughter of horror, emphasizing “pleasure”, while communicating obviously and well anything about the powers of the circle of relatives and the desire to triumph over trauma. Prestigious contemporary horror films are European artistic dishes that we “are supposed to love”; Thirt13en Ghosts is a silly Amblin scam that “supposed” to love the hassle. Reader, like the many ghosts of Thirt13 in Ghosts: Get out of the way.
The film directed through Steve Beck is a new version of the 1960 film directed through William Castle, thirteen Ghosts. Castle’s legacy is to direct, imbuing his value of horror with cheerfully fearless devices and tactics to push audiences beyond the confines of the “cinema frame.” In the case of thirteen Ghosts, the audience won specialized 3-d glasses that, if used and seen through a bachelor lens, would reveal the ghosts in the frame. If not used or noticeable through the other lens, the ghosts will remain “invisible” in the mount. Castle called it, of course, “Illusion-O.” And 41 years later, Beck and screenwriters Neal Marshall Stevens and Richard D’Ovidio took this extratextual point of performative disorder and introduced it into the text.
You, the public, don’t have to wear glasses to see ghosts anymore. But the characters in Thirt13 in Ghosts do. And when they don’t, we see ghosts and terrible creatures (with simple and practical makeup through SFX master Greg Nicotero) stalking them with a dramatic point of irony that makes you need to scream on the screen. This selection to overcome the OG device as a component of the film works not only as a perhaps more immersive way to gain public investment, but also as an intention from Beck, Stevens and D’Ovidio. Amazing, grandiose and absolutely “not cool” genre concepts are nothing to run away from, and it probably wouldn’t be a remake that secretly comments on its original material. He is so indebted to the joys of ways beyond making horror films that he did anything that even critics at the time denounced in a basic shock mode in the film.
The bloodless opening of Thirt13en Ghosts picks up this idea, which I can basically call “the excitement of bad taste in horror is clever,” and works with her in a wild, sumptuous and exuberant set room that results directly from the MCU, but with a damn blood and ghosts, and F. Murray Abraham and Matthew Lillard yelling at each other. This opening series is a delicious example of that the more it is. Cinematographer Gale Tattersall spins and spins the camera through atmospheric and practical settings with cheerful abandonment. Composer John Frizzell elevates Gothic melodrama beyond emotional barriers and not easy to locate new stratospheres. And Abraham and Lillard, who laugh so much betting on the film Thirt13 in Ghosts, present the character, theme and plot with power and delight, permeating lines like “Don’t Play God” and replicating as “Children Play” with more fried fish. Sauce. It’s an unexpected series of audacity, of a time when we were treating horror movies with the budget point and cinematic force of a summer blockbuster, and actually intelligent communication.
In addition, Beck proves that he can also achieve that prestige. There is a circle of family traumas at the center of Thirt13in Ghosts, which gives you an identifiable sense of what is at stake emotionally and the desire to gain beyond ghosts. Tony Shalhoub plays the patriarch of a circle of relatives. He, his sons Shannon Elizabeth and Alec Roberts, and his governess (and my non-public lord and savior) Rah Digga, suffered something horrible. The circle of the mother of the relatives, Kathryn Anderson, died in a space fire, leaving the rest of them to cope with other physical characteristics without her. How does Beck tell us? Surprisingly, softly and subtly. The first titles are played in a sublime one-shot carousel, the motion slowly rotating around Shalhoub’s space, advancing in time with each revolution. We see and the love of the circle of relatives for each other, and the pain that comes to them in a euphoric and disorderly moment is palpable. This gives us everything we want to be invested in the image, in a blank and creative way, and radically different from the upper octane chills of the open cold. Maybe never.
From there, Thirt13en Ghosts alternates between those two modes – exciting sets with noisy videos and quiet characters with a refreshing brake pumping – until it is synthesized into an inevitable climax with one of the fortunately sentimental nude highs. conclusions of horror that I’ve noticed for years. The film knows that we have to introduce a haunted space full of a dozen ghosts of bakers; To achieve this, he ingeniously fuses the fates of Shalhoub and Abraham, revealing that they are related, Abraham is, um, “dead”, and leaves his elegant home to Shalhoub’s circle of relatives (an exacerbation of the circle of family traumas we have noticed so far; perfect!). Once there, we can appreciate the wonders of Sean Hargreaves’ incredible production design; This wild space, to the fullest made entirely of glass (both in the force of visibility in this image!), covered in ghost-proof scrolls and interlaced puzzles, is more beautiful than any green wallpaper created since then.
And then the ghosts. My god. Nicotero’s designs will blow your mind. These are horrible, intense and tactile works of SFX ingenuity. And the most productive of all? They all have their own traumas and stories to deal with, represented through unexpected images and “ghost gadgets” of which we still have nothing joking (I want to know what happens to “The Great Child” and “The Terrible Mother”), however, they allude to a rich and explosive mythology that unfolds in the midst of what turns out to be nothing “scary ghosts” (also by chance , what I think is going on with the film as a whole). Without spoiling anything, we nevertheless notice a major trauma of one of the great ghosts, and the way it intersects and responds both to Shalhoub’s trauma and to the shock of the plot of the film is, like the home of those characters. . in, an effective riddle narrated with an unusual style.
Critics hated Thirt13 in Ghosts. And our most respected fresh horror filmmakers have largely distanced (or ignored in the first place) from any sense of precedent or influence they may have obtained from the symbol (with the imaginable exception of something like It Two Chapter). But I find that it remains a film of unbridled energy, of joy in a know-how visible, even grandiose, of strong and welcoming emotional foundations that make a contribution to make its stylistic progression even more difficult. The seams of the poster are visible, the complete copy of the ideas, the color palette that requires the visceral attention of your eyes. And that’s the goal, not something to escape from.
Thirt13en Ghosts is available in a Blu-ray Collector’s Edition of Shout Factory. For more appreciations of “things that most people consider bad,” here’s an edition of Batman Forever.