Cyrus Kriticos has a passion for collecting something rather unusual – ghosts. Aided by a young psychic, Kriticos carefully seeks out the restful spirits in the place that they died, where he captures them in a specially designed cell, before returning them to a bizarre spectral collection chamber in his enormous mansion. Whilst collecting the twelfth ghost for his collection, Cyrus is killed and his entire estate is subsequently inherited by his nephew.

But there is more to this house than meets the eye. Unbeknown to Arthur and his family, the basement of the house conceals a dark secret – the collection of ghosts accumulated by Cyrus during his life. Whilst Arthur’s family explore the strange house, Cyrus’s solicitor collects his retainer from one of the basement rooms – and unwittingly activates a mechanism within the house that puts the whole family in danger. It transpires that the house is in actual fact one giant machine – and once the machine has kicked in, nothing can stop the house from releasing its ghostly prisoners one by one. As Arrhur and his family gradually encounter the terrible denizens of the house, they are reliant on the support of a psychic and a spiritualist to keep them alive – but who will be the thirteenth ghost?

The main concept of both the original and the remake is that the family is unable to see their spectral guests without the aid of specially designed glasses, rather like 3-D glasses. This is an entertaining premise, as it provides plenty of opportunities for spooky, jumpy moments as the various family members switch from wearing glasses to not – and subsequently being able and not able to see the inhabitants of the basement. Where this works particularly well is in the way in which the film plays on the idea that there are ghosts all around us, and that we cannot see them. Without the glasses, the house looks normal, and very appealing to Arthur and his family. By donning their spectacles, the family is opened up to a whole new environment and this certainly plays on your inner fears. This is made more effective by the fact that the family members are still susceptible to attacks from the ghosts regardless of whether they are wearing glasses or not – so one of them may be physically attacked, without the others being able to see the assailant. It’s all very creepy, and with the touches of modern special effects, it is all very convincing too.

As a horror film, Thirteen Ghosts is only partly successful. At the outset, there is quite a lot of gore and nastiness – I was initially quite surprised that the film had only attracted a 15 certificate. (There is a particularly satisfying sequence involving a lawyer and a pair of glass doors.) However, once events moved to the house there was less violence and the film concentrated more on the mystery and intrigue of the collection of ghosts. When Arthur and his family find themselves locked in the house, I did rather wonder what they were going to do with the characters as it did occur to me that there were relatively few characters to terrorise. Although Arthur’s young son disappears early on in the film, the viewer knows that he will not be harmed, because it is a simple rule of horror movies that children are always ok. This is probably one of my main criticisms of the film. Although there are some significant twists in the plot, once events in the house take off, the writer seems to have taken very few chances and I thought there were a lot of missed opportunities. For me, the appeal of horror movies is the opportunity to break with convention and shock the viewer. In The Thirteen Ghosts, you quickly become familiar with the ghosts and they therefore soon lose some of their menace. The film ultimately descends into Jurassic Park territory, with plenty of thrills and spills, but no balls.