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Formula for a horror flick: Take one grieving widower, his two children, and their spunky nanny; drop them in a high-tech haunted house from which there's no escape; add a toxic dose of computerized visual effects and digital music; stir in one thieving lawyer, one megalomaniacal rich uncle, a dozen tormented spirits, and two obsessed ghost-hunters; now stab, hack, burn, slash, and slice repeatedly and at random until exhausted, or until the bad guys all die and the trapped ghosts go free, whichever comes first. That's a wrap.

It's also all there is to this repugnant remake of the 1960 William Castle film of the same name. The new Thirteen Ghosts opens with great portent—an ominous wind blowing through a junkyard at night—but immediately decays into a literal bloodbath that continues for most of the film's 91 minutes, punctuated by moments of dialogue so insipid, and plot devices so vapid ("Let's split up!"), that they make you squirm in your seat. Each round of mayhem ups the ante for the round to follow, the blood never dries, and one by one the disposable characters meet their disgusting and inevitable fates.

Early on, one especially skillful knife-wielding wraith dispatches the corrupt attorney by doing a head-to-toe coronal section, perhaps a cinematic first. The rest of the bloodshed—there's enough to make Charles Manson sick—is standard stuff: death by fright, beheading, stabbing, impaling, and crushing. The story's hero, Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub), a mild-mannered math teacher who really loves his kids, spends what seems like half the film dealing with the threat of giant rotating razors, beneath which his children are trapped on the ocularis infernum, or "eye of Hell." He and they escape becoming shish kebab, of course, but just barely.

The haunted house built by Arthur's uncle, Cyrus Kriticos (F. Murray Abraham), is an impressive edifice of ghost-proof glass, antique scientific artifacts, occult bric-a-brac, and an operating mechanism that resembles the innards of a gigantic mechanical watch. The visuals—reminiscent of some of Peter Greenaway's better efforts—are fascinating for a few moments, but aren't compelling enough to overcome the anxious boredom you experience knowing the film is nothing but the thinnest excuse for nonstop gore. Thirteen Ghosts came and went so quickly from theaters that no one noticed. Just a few days after its release on DVD, it was on sale through the Columbia House DVD Club for only $10—a massive discount off its $24.98 list price.

Dark Castle Entertainment must have had a whopper budget, but they lavished almost all of it on sets and special effects, leaving nothing for script development. There are more holes in the story than in a ceiling covered with acoustical tiles. For a film to appeal to anyone other than Doom-addicted adolescent boys, it must have at least a plausible plot and characters you care about. Thirteen Ghosts has neither. Even Arthur's young son, who's separated from his family and wanders about the basement of the house on his scooter, evokes zero sympathy. Why actors of the caliber of F. Murray Abraham, winner of the 1985 Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of composer Antonio Salieri in Amadeus, or the enormously undervalued Shalhoub, who was fabulous in Galaxy Quest, would choose to lend their talents to a turkey like this is beyond comprehension. Maybe they needed the money. There's no other explanation. There is, however, the fast-forward button, this film's saving grace.

Thirteen Ghosts is shot in dark, moody colors; many of the endless scenes of the haunted house's mechanical devices have that grainy, flat, pseudo-three-dimensional quality common to so much digital animation. The soundtrack is oppressive, bass-heavy, and monotonous. The plot is an insult to anyone whose world-view is wider than the screen on a video game. The acting is slovenly, tedious, and predictable, the dialogue laughable, the carnage excessive. The DVD comes packed with plenty of extras—a commentary, the original trailer, a dance-club video with gore galore (there's a romantic notion)—but why bother? This moronic bloodbath should definitely not be seen by children—or by anyone else.