Thirteen
Ghosts
After countless hours of debate over which
version of Thirteen Ghosts I was
going to do my review on, I finally picked the remake of the 1960’s version. My
main reason for this choice of picture was the ghosts themselves and the use of
computer graphics to enhance each ones checkered pasts and ability to appear and
disappear throughout the film. Director Steve Beck’s ability to draw the
audience into the terror/suspense of the film from the beginning to the climax
is a sure fire example of how a horror picture was made in 2001.
Story telling
The story telling for this film was well
written and easy to follow even with the flashbacks and forwards that we see
through Dennis Rafkin’s eyes played by Matthew Lillard. The film starts off
with a shot of an abandoned junkyard covered in crime scene tape, suddenly
there is a large crash of cars as a tanker truck plows its way into the yard
followed by three S.U.V.s and a vintage Rolls Royce carrying two passengers.
The camera closes in to show one of the two men getting out the Rolls as a well
dressed gentleman, and the other looks to be suffering from a rather bad headache,
dressed in a sweater and jeans with a plastic jacket over his clothes. By
having the camera jump around the yard we see that the other members of this
crew are setting up speakers and a large, clear cube with wires and tubes
attached to it being lowered into a makeshift pathway. Once, everything is set up, the order is given
to start this weird medieval chant as the tanker truck drives down the pathway spraying blood on the pathway leading to the cube.
The scene itself gives you part of the
back story as to how this well dressed gentle who we find out is named Cyrus
and played by F. Murray Abrahams is killed while capturing his twelfth ghost as
well as some idea of what he had in store later on had he survived. The film then jumps forward to a 360 degree
shot of a gentleman sitting in a chair looking out a window, with laughter and
conversations with a female. The scene then changes and the feel of the
surroundings when the sound of a fire alarm blares in the background and the
audience hears what has happened to this once happy family as a fire has caused
the death of the mother/wife of this family. As, the camera finishes its pan of
the room it too changes from white walls and bookshelves filled with books and
family pictures sitting on a desk to dark and empty walls with boxes stacked in
a corner of a small dimly lighted room we see the same man sitting in a chair
looking out a window with a view of bricks on the other side of the glass. There a sudden knock on the door and the
camera pans over to it where the audience sees a wall filled with past due
notices and a teenage girl telling the gentleman who is her father that he
needs to get a move on or he will be late for work. The
audience is then taken to a small kitchen where we see the teenage girl (
Shannon Elizabeth) cooking what is to be breakfast, a small boy( Alec Roberts)
reading the morning papers current obituary into a tape recorder as an African
American woman (Rah Diggs) corrects him
on the pronunciation of decapitation. It
is here that we gain an understanding of the changes that the family had to go through
after the loss of the mother/wife and that things are about to change with the
approach of a dark figure in the hallway outside the apartment they now live
in. From this point on the film starts
to gain a type of this is too good to be true feel when the family is shown the
last will and testament of Uncle Cyrus (the well dressed man from the junkyard)
and are given a key to a house that is completely furnished and made out of
what looks like glass by the lawyer Ben Moss (J.R. Bourne). After, seeing the video of Cyrus’ will the
family drives to the house to see it up close and discover the house is off the
beaten path of civilization and see a repair guy trying to get into the house
which he claims is causing a power outage.
Unknown to the family this is Rafkin trying to figure out what Cyrus was
up to with capturing of the ghosts. Arthur (Tony Shalhoub) notices that the glass walls are etched in Latin and
the rooms are filled with priceless artifacts. While the family looks around
Rafkin goes down to the basement of the house where he notices the containment
cubes holding the ghosts he helped capture.
Acting
Acting
While, the acting in the film was at times
very dramatic, and sometimes comical. The ghosts and the house themselves were
impressive in how they changed directions and were able to appear and disappear
in a blink of an eye even with the special glasses on. In the revised version
of the William Castle film it allowed for ad libbing from Matthew Lillard’s
character Dennis Rafkin as he gives the audience a taste of the back-story of
his working relationship with Cyrus in the capturing of the ghosts keeping the
vital part about Arthur’s wife a secret that we see through his flashbacks of
the captures and future. The acting
also, allows the audience to experience the freighting and undying love of the
Jean (Kathryn Anderson) as she warns her son Bobby (Alec Roberts) that he needs
to return upstairs through the use of her son’s tape recorder. The acting also,
allows the audience to gain a feeling of terror during the ghost attacks inside
and outside the cubes that are holding them until their timely release. Unlike, the original version of the film the
house itself plays a big major role in that it is an ever changing maze of
entries and exits to other rooms and hallways leading to the basement and the
cells and the center of the house where the twelve ghosts are to met and power
up some kind of machine that is supposed to be of the devil’s design.
Cinematography
Most of the revised version of Thirteen ghosts was done through the
help of computer graphic imagery, the cinematography the film was terrifically
done even with having to overcome the difficulties of not having enough
Plexiglas and glass tiles to complete a whole house for the film. The director and director of photography had
to overcome the reflections of the actors in the glass and only use them when
needed for certain scenes. In order to overcome this problem director Steve
Beck and Gale Tattersall used several different framing angels, tracking shots
and filming certain parts of the film out of chronological order so, that the
production crew could move parts of the house around as well as, use high-key
lighting, subjective camera shots mixed with tracking shots even using
blue/green screen shots to make the ghosts look like they disappear and reappear
at the right moments in time to elevate the sense of terror the actors were
dealing with in the fight scenes between both Arthur, Kathy and Rafkin. By
allowing the audience to see what is happening through the special glasses they
gain an understanding of just how important they are to movie and why the actors
cannot see what is happening without them.
Editing
With the help of Edward A. Warschilka and
Derek G. Brechin the audience really gets the feel that Arthur and his family
are walking through a two story house that is alive and holding a secret. By
using the Kuleshov effect and montage theory as well as parallel editing while
Arthur, Kathy(Shannon Elizabeth), Maggie (Rah Diggs) and Rafkin are looking for
Bobby so, that they can escape from the house before anyone else is hurt or
killed by the vengeful ghosts that have escaped their cells. By editing the
shots in just the right places the audience is able to get the idea of terror
this family is going through even without knowing about the bits of flashbacks
and forwards from Rafkin when he seeks out the ghost in the beginning of the
film in the junkyard to when he comes back to help save Arthur and his family
from the vengeful ghosts living in captivity in the basement of the big, glass
house disguised as a machine of death for the thirteen ghost.
Sound
Thirteen Ghosts contained very little
sound except for a few carefully placed sound effects and use of monaural sound
here and there to help the audience gain the suspenseful build-up with
synchronized sounds of footsteps on the glass floor and the clicking sound
of Bobby’s scooter, the ghostly voice of Jean talking through Bobby’s tape
recorder telling him to go back upstairs and all of the dialogue about the
ghosts, the house and how each one of the ghosts came to be through the back
story told by Katina (Embeth Davidtz) ,there is also the chanting that lures
the ghosts out of hiding so that they appear in the beginning of the film and again during the
climax of the film when they move to the center of the house.
Style and Directing
Even though director Steve Beck is not
widely known, his film credits include Ghost
ship and Thir13en Ghosts. Beck’s
style of directing could be that Expressionism with his artful design of camera
angles, the playing of light, shadows to gain the feel of terror and suspense throughout
the film. Thus, even with all of the digitally images used for the ghosts and
house the film still has the look and feel of its predecessor 13 Ghosts directed by William Castle in
1960.
Impact
It is in my opinion that the impact of
society on Thirteen Ghosts even
though it was produced at a mid-budget film company the film itself was able to
give the audience what it truly wanted, an escape from reality and an entry
into the paranormal through a special pair of glasses that allowed the actors
to see the terror that was coming at them. While, society would say that the
film used too much computer generated images (C.G.I.), it was these effects
that gave the film the feeling of terror and mystery as to what was in store
for Arthur and his family.
Genre
Thirteen
Ghosts is that of a horror film as described from our text a film that
produces fear or anxiety in the viewer, with a sub-genre of a mystery in which
the audience tries to solve the reason behind why there is a need for the
twelve captured ghosts in the house.
Application of approach
The approach taken in Thirteen Ghosts is one that allows the audience to feel the terror
that the actors are going through as they try to figure out a way to get out of
the house that contains these captured ghosts.
Beck’s approach is to give the audience just enough information to keep
them on the edge of their seats to find out what Arthur is going to do.
Overall textural themes
The overall theme of Thirteen Ghosts is that of good versus evil; however after watching
the film several times I found an underlying theme of love goes on even through
the death of a loved one or in other words a universal truth as defined from
our text as an experience we have all gone through or need to go through.
Closing thoughts
As
stated at the beginning of this paper I found it hard to decide which version
of Thirteen Ghosts I wanted to
discuss. While the version I choose was that of a remake, had it not been for
the advancements in film production and editing Thirteen Ghosts would not be the horror picture it was set out to
be. It is through the directive style of Steve Beck and the help of what I
consider an excellent editing crew of Edward A. Warschilka and Derek G. Brechin
this film could have been a major disaster at the box office with one wrong cut
of the film. While, the storyline was modernized from the 1960 version directed
by William Castle, Thirteen Ghosts is
a piece of horror history filled with special effects and computer graphic
images that lured audiences of 2001 into theaters for a piece of the paranormal
realm that intrigues us all in some way or the other.
References
Adler, G., Silver, J., &
Zemeckis, R. (Producers), & Beck, S. (Director). (2001). Thirteen ghosts
[Motion picture]. United
States: Warner Brothers Pictures.
Castle, W. (Producer/Director). (1960). 13 ghosts [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia
Pictures.
Goodykoontz, B., & Jacobs, C. P. (2011). Film: from watching to seeing (P. Galuardi, J. Anderson, & C. Ganim, Eds.).
Retrieved from http://content.ashford.edu/print/AUENG225.11.2
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