Like 1999's House On Haunted Hill, Thirteen Ghosts loosely remakes a film by legendary producer, director, and con man William Castle. Also like the House remake, it botches the job horribly. Founded by Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis to retrofit Castle's old properties, the Dark Castle Entertainment production company looked to Castle for inspiration and found only lessons in economy. Where House featured a group of strangers stranded in a mysterious haunted house thanks to the promise of inheriting a fortune, Thirteen Ghosts features a family stranded in a haunted house thanks to the promise of inheriting a fortune. The principle extends to the cast, a potluck assortment that seems to have been assembled based on who showed up first and asked for the least money. Though always welcome, Tony Shalhoub seems as out of place amidst such abrasive material as he does playing a dad to Shannon Elizabeth, or a foil to established ham-scented actors F. Murray Abraham and Matthew Lillard. (Making her big-screen debut as Shalhoub's sass-talking maid, Rah Digga takes her cues entirely from the latter camp.) The setup brings brokenhearted widower Shalhoub to an elaborate glass mansion inherited from eccentric uncle Abraham, a collector of weapons, archeological artifacts, and, as it's later revealed, ghosts. Arriving to claim their inheritance, Shalhoub, Elizabeth, Digga, and a morbid tot receive dire warnings from pill-popping psychic Lillard, who owns of a pair of glasses that allows him to see ghosts. (The film never addresses the question of why anyone in possession of such an item would ever take it off.) Soon, Shalhoub and company find themselves on the run from such colorful creations as The Juggernaut, The Great Child, and the nude Angry Princess, whose presence seems to confirm the existence of silicone after death. An enjoyable film could have been made from Ghosts' premise, its cast, or even its script, which frequently pauses to deliver hilariously convoluted exposition. The real culprit here is special-effects expert Steve Beck, making his directorial debut. Beck matches a dour tone to a seizure-inducing, flash-and-cut editing scheme and a sound design more aggressive than the assembly line of a Chrysler plant. He's less concerned with entertaining an audience than pounding it into submission, and the only thing scary about his film is the prospect that he might someday make another.