D

Robert Zemeckis’ inexplicable drive to revisit the films of William Castle continues unabated. The late director’s laughable thrillers from the fifties and sixties, with their ghastly scripts, inept acting and slovenly production, were instant camp, and it seems a fool’s errand to resurrect them in new, expensive dress for modern audiences. But that hasn’t stopped Zemeckis. First he made “What Lies Beneath,” about as complete a homage to Castle’s output as could be devised. Then he co-produced last year’s terrible juiced-up remake of “House on Haunted Hill.” And now he and his cohorts offer a refashioning of an even worse Castle effort. (The 1958 “House,” with Vincent Price, was hilariously awful, but the 1960 “Ghosts,” with Charles Herbert, was virtually unwatchable.) Of course, Zemeckis has always had a soft spot for grisly junk: he was one of the brains behind the “Tales from the Crypt” TV series and spinoff features, after all. In that context the devotion that he, Joel Silver and Gilbert Adler have shown to Castle’s memory is perhaps understandable.

But that doesn’t make it any more forgivable. The 2000 “House” was a wretched movie, and this new one–released for the Halloween trade–is at least as bad. The utter childishness of the original has been jettisoned, of course, in favor of a thrill-ride atmosphere larded with flashy special effects, but the outcome is no more enjoyable. All that’s retained is the basic premise of an impecunious family inheriting the home of a crazy uncle who spent his time collecting wraiths. In this version, however, the abode isn’t a “Psycho”-style creaky old mansion, but a futuristic-looking edifice which encloses a maze of glass corridors whose walls are covered with Latin spells to entrap spirits, along with a huge machine that shifts the interior panels periodically in accordance, we learn, with a series of utterances in a Satanically-inspired book dating from the fifteenth century. This description alone should demonstrate that it’s just about impossible to decipher, to any degree, the plot, which is more labyrinthine and illogical than the house; suffice it to say that the story has something to do with the uncle’s plan to open “the eye of hell” (with “eye,” it should be noted, consistently mispronounced in Latin as “ocularis” rather than “oculus”) by imprisoning thirteen spirits, most of them grotesquely disfigured and violently homicidal, and using his nephew’s commitment to keep his kids from being harmed by them to complete the requirements of the old prophecy. (Why anybody should want to open the eye of hell is left unexplained–sheer nastiness, one supposes from the portrayal of old Uncle Cyrus presented here.)

Whatever the premise, much frantic idiocy results from it. This “Thirteen Ghosts” is essentially an extended chase movie, in which the various Kriticos family members–dad Arthur (Tony Shalhoub), daughter Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth) and tyke Bobby (Alec Roberts), along with wise- crackling housekeeper Maggie (Rah Digga), sleazy lawyer Ben Moss (JR Bourne), wacko psychic and former ghost-hunter Rafkin (Matthew Lillard) and self-described spirit protector Kalina (Embeth Dadidtz)–run about the Kriticos house for ninety minutes periodically threatened by the assortment of ghouls trapped there, who appear in sudden flashes and sometimes stab or pummel the living whenever their ever-changing glass cells permit. Maybe all the rushing about would be more interesting if the geography of the mansion were made clear, or if the trek through it weren’t reminiscent of those chintzy old jungle movies in which the heroes kept walking past what were obviously the same rocks and trees. (The design of the corridors makes it look as though one small set had been constructed and then persistently rearranged to represent successive stages on the journey.) It would also help if there were any characters to care about. But Shalhoub makes a pallid father, Elizabeth an annoying daughter, and Roberts an obnoxious little brother. The only people who make impressions do so for entirely the wrong reasons: Davidtz, Bourne and Digga come on too strong, but even still they seem positively comatose beside Lillard and Abraham, two hambones who masticate the scenery so energetically that you wish they had the opportunity to swallow (and perhaps to choke on it). If there’s a worse actor than Lillard working in films today, one doesn’t want to encounter him; in his desperate search for laughs he’s become a “Spinal Tap” performer, with a range on the hysteria amplifier that goes only from ten to eleven. Abraham is a much sadder case; when we won an Oscar for “Amadeus” it seemed that he might have a career, but he proved congenitally incapable of understatement, and so has become fodder for direct-to-video rubbish and occasional big- screen bombs like this. First-time director Steve Beck certainly doesn’t rein either of them in; he does manage a couple of quick shocks, but mostly his film is more boring and unintentionally risible than frightening.

Lillard’s character, it should be noted, does deliver one line of dialogue that goes far to describe “Thirteen Ghosts.” Discussing the agony attendant to seizures he suffers when in the presence of spirits, he says, “Bad? That’s one way to describe it.” It’s a sentiment viewers can embrace with reference to the movie itself, which might cause them to writhe and squirm a bit, too. Zemeckis is currently preparing a remake of another of William Castle’s masterpieces, the ghoulish “Macabre” (1958). Lord preserve us!

C

An air of earnestness and manipulation hangs heavily over the new film by Irwin Winkler, about an eccentric father who tries to reconnect with his disaffected son by forcing the kid to join with him in constructing a long-planned seaside abode. Under other circumstances (and less a few instances of naughty language and explicit sexuality), “Life as a House” would be the perfect teleflick: had Kevin Kline not opted to take the lead role of the rumpled, cranky, terminally ill but devoted dad, it might have ended up as a Lifetime Cable entry. But whatever the venue, it remains as heavy-handed overall as its central metaphor (the pair are rebuilding their relationship by building the family home, of course). This is a “House” that seems entirely prefabricated.

One can understand why Kline was attracted to the part of George Monroe; it’s the kind of flashy character that enables an actor to showcase almost all the elements of his thespian repertoire. When we first encounter the fellow, he’s ostentatiously living almost a bum’s life amidst affluent neighbors who consider him a pain (though sometimes, as in the case of Coleen, the divorcee next door–played with her usual winsomeness by Mary Steenburgen–a charmingly disheveled one). Next we observe him at work as an architect, painstakingly preparing scale models of structures that now, it’s explained, could be much more efficiently produced in computer simulation. And we watch him visiting his alienated son Sam (Hayden Christensen), who’s kind of a male version of the characters that Thora Birch essayed in “Ghost World” and Leelee Sobieski in “My First Mister.” Sam dresses in gothic black, listens to his stereo far too loud, treats everybody with contempt, engages in physically dangerous behavior to get high, and even– it finally emerges–acts the part of hustler on occasion to feed his drug habit. We also glimpse George interacting with his ex-wife Robin (Kristin Scott Thomas), who–we can tell–still feels for him deeply although she’s remarried, to workaholic Peter (Jamey Sheridan), and has two adorable younger children with him. Before the picture’s even gotten traction, however, George’s life abruptly changes: he’s fired (giving rise to an emotional outburst that allows Kline to let loose in a particularly splashy way), and then finds that he’s only got a few months to live. He decides to spend his final days building the house his family had always dreamed of, enlisting the hostile Sam in the effort. As the weeks wear on, the boy’s resistance breaks down, he and the old man connect again, and even Robin finds herself drawn once more to her former husband. There are a few side plots tossed into the mix–Sam gets close to Coleen’s daughter Alyssa (Jena Malone), and Coleen herself becomes involved, in a self-consciously quirky twist, with one of Alyssa’s suitors–but the whole thrust of the piece is George as the emotional magnet who draws virtually everybody to himself. Such a high-focus, colorful figure would be irresistible to most middle-aged actors, and Kline is clearly no exception.

In truth, though, Monroe seems a literary construct rather than a real person, and though Kline throws himself into the role with his usual abandon, the result comes across more as an acting stunt than an authentic character. Christensen, on the other hand, is disappointingly bland, a fact that does not bode well for his assumption of the part of Anakin Skywalker (the young Darth Vader) in the upcoming “Star Wars” installment; Sam’s transformation from a rebellious kid to a hard-working son never becomes credible. Scott Thomas is unimpressive in a poorly written role (the vicissitudes of Robin’s relationship with husband Peter are handled especially clumsily), and Malone and Steenburgen overplay broadly.

The collapse of this “House,” however, shouldn’t be blamed on the cast, which gives the piece a game try, but on writer Mark Andrus; the attempt to meld “American Beauty” with “Terms of Endearment” proves shallow indeed. The script’s transitions from rather vulgar humor to overwrought drama to domestic soap opera to calculated uplift are indelicate to say the least, and Winkler proves unable to keep the seams from showing. Even worse is a twist at the close (related to some earlier actions by Sam that, at the time, seem entirely out of left field) that allows for a happiness-amidst-the-tears denouement. The phoniness here is palpable, and it reinforces the impression of calculation that dooms the picture.

There are, indeed, innumerable elements of “Life as a House” that feel false and forced, not least the many shots of the sunlight glistening on the ocean as Mark Isham’s music swells up more powerfully than the waves themselves. The score adds to the irritation: it features the tones of a xylophone tinkling away to create an atmosphere of cute, quirky charm, mingled with just a tinge of sadness. I’ve been convinced for some time that xylophones should be banished from film music entirely. Isham’s bathetic contribution to Winkler’s ham-fisted attempt at a touching family drama confirms that view.