I think I saw this when it premiered, or on TV shortly after but I remembered very little about it. Time has not improved it.Arthur (Tony Shaloub) has had a rough time recently. His beloved wife (Kathryn Anderson) died in a fire, leaving him with a mountain of debt and two kids to raise. Fortunately, his ghost hunting Uncle Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham) has also just died and left Arthur his enormous glass mansion. Just before he can sign the paperwork and celebrate this good fortune, a self-proclaimed medium (Matthew Lillard) and a ghost emancipation advocate (Embeth Davidtz) both show up inside the house with dire warnings. The house is not a house, she says, it's a machine from Hell to give someone insight into the future. It's full of evil captured spirits, he says, which are slowly being released in order to torment and kill the inhabitants. And they can only be seen via special light-up glasses.
Truly, this is one of the dumbest horror movies to ever get a greenlight. Nothing makes sense. The writing is lazy and muddled, probably because there were five screenwriters (including an uncredited James Gunn), there's almost no characterization, and none of the motivations hold up. For instance, first shot of Arthur is him in a large book-filled room, talking through a window into a large backyard with his wife, while his kids play. Then it segues to Arthur and the kids in an apartment with a wall of past due notices. But they have a live-in housekeeper/nanny? So he didn't have property insurance? His wife didn't have life insurance? Medical bills wiped him out? Nothing really explains going from affluence to poverty except that the script required he be desperate enough to accept his uncle's house no questions asked.
The whole movie is like that. It skips along from chase scene to chase scene, hoping you'll be so distracted by the dozen ghosts blinking in and out you won't ask any questions either. A garbage film in all respects, but it's streaming on HBO Max if you're interested.
No comments:
Post a Comment