Things I learned while watching “Thirteen Ghosts”

Okay. Now, I put these things up for the betterment of all of us. Horror films teach us many things that we might one day need to know in order to survive in any number of highly unlikely, but not entirely impossible scenarios. You should really thank me later for this one. My having posted this means you don’t have to sit through this piece of shit, unless you’re in the mood for some serious punishment.

1. Ghost-hunting is a bad idea. It becomes an exponentially worse idea if you know that you’re going to require a truck load of blood as bait to catch the ghost in question.

2. Monk and his kids are terrible actors. I’m serious. It’s actually painful to watch. Along the same line, I feel the need to point out that it’s only fun and suspenseful to put a little kid in a horror film if the kid isn’t an annoying little shit you’d pay good money to see killed at some point over the course of the movie.

3. I’ve said many times that it’s a bad idea to play with puzzle boxes that open portals to Hell. If you decide to live in one, you are fucked.

4. Plastic glasses will allow you to see ghosts. I never would’ve guessed prior to actually seeing this work. I did see it, though, and we all know that television never lies.

5. Greed is bad. If you live in a giant puzzle box that opens a portal to Hell, you might be okay, until the attorney ventures into the basement to steal a bag of money and inadvertently triggers the ghost-release mechanism. Watching him die is worth it, though. Actually, yeah. Go to the basement with him. But only if you’re a character in this movie. Because if you are, you deserve to die.

6. Psychics like to get themselves worked up to the point that they’re practically crapping their pants. Frequently.

7. Ghosts “have to obey spells. Written or spoken,” per aforementioned pants-crapping psychic.

8. Okay. So it’s not a giant puzzle box that opens a portal to Hell. It’s a machine designed by the devil and powered by the dead. There’s not a huge difference there, I don’t think. Oh. And it, “sees the future.” I have no idea how I’m going to get to the end of this movie, at this point.

9. Throwing a flare at ghosts in attack-mode causes them to momentarily disappear, which might give you the edge you need to escape. But only if you move quickly.

10. The “Ocularus Infernum” will make you the most powerful man on earth, by giving you knowledge. At least – and I feel the need to defend some portion of this movie, if only to stop feeling like I’ve completely wasted the time I’ve spent watching it – someone had the notion to bastardize one of Sir Francis Bacon’s ideals here. Now, it’s a lousy bastardization, but we can’t say they didn’t try. Nope. Didn’t work. This is still wasted time.

11. Greatness requires sacrifice. So you should dupe your girlfriend into thinking that you’re sending her on an errand to kill your nephew’s kids, but then kill her instead. For fun, I guess, because I can’t see any other reason.

12. Evidently, it is possible to turn out a total crap-fest of a mock horror film and still find the time to throw in a bunch of pseudo feel-good, heavy-handed, moralistic bullshit. That’s something else I didn’t know.