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"Can I count on you to keep us safe?"

Thirteen Ghosts begins with a solidly creepy opening shocker involving ghosts in an automobile graveyard and then shows us one of the best title sequences I have ever seen. In an incredible computer-enhanced tracking shot, we see the entire history of the Kriticos family, from its auspicious beginning to the awful accident that caused the loss of a family member and a home, and landed them in a cramped city apartment with few prospects of ever not having to share one bathroom. But then they get a visit from the lawyer of the recently deceased "Uncle Cyrus," and then things get really weird.

You see, Uncle Cyrus, a "collector" of weird and exotic objects, left the Kriticoses (doesn't that roll trippingly off the tongue?) his house, a bizarre, secluded behemoth with glass walls and moving floors. The family, along with the nanny (Rah Digga), is wary, but excited until its youngest member wanders off into the basement and vanishes without a trace. They split up and go looking for him, and soon discover that the dream house is a lot more dangerous than it first appeared, though I would have been suspicious of any house with transparent bedroom walls.

Though our protagonists are still baffled, the nature of Uncle Cyrus's dwelling is no mystery to us at that point. In the basement are twelve containment cages, each housing one of 12 ghosts. These are violent, malevolent beings whose power Uncle Cyrus apparently needed to conquer the world in one way or another (or something). There are all sorts of weird machines throughout the house that seem to be run by the souls of the dead. Now, the family has to, uh, not die.

The first fifteen minutes of Thirteen Ghosts is almost real filmmaking; the rest of it is the worst kind of overkill. Loud, flashy and obnoxiously in-your-face, the movie undermines its own efforts to actually be scary and succeeds only in being bewildering. My reaction to what it tried to pass off as terrifying wasn't fear so much as abject displeasure; I did not appreciate the rat-tat-tat assault on my senses, and I would have like to know what was going on at any given moment.

There was a similar, critically panned movie called The Haunting about two years ago in which a magnificent production design redeemed any shortcomings the story may have had. The look of Thirteen Ghosts is at least a match for it; the difference is that the other film was made with a level of competency by schlock master Jan de Bont whereas this one is thrown together without any semblance of directing talent by Steve Beck, a former "visual effects art director" for Industrial Light and Magic. Quadruple the average shot length and you may have something here.

I don't know what the hell Tony Shalhoub is doing here -- though he does bring some much-needed dignity to the project -- and F. Murray Abraham needs to stop playing cheesy villains (Star Trek: Insurrection, Finding Forrester, now this) and get himself a real role, which he hasn't had since Children of the Revolution back in '96, and even then he played Stalin.

There are certain films whose failure is all the more disappointing when one considers the project's inherent potential. Thirteen Ghosts is not one of those films. The only way it could have been good is if the screenwriters and director had taken a different approach from the get-go. That doesn't make sitting through it any less painful.