After an excessively brutal opening scene, the movie fooled me by staging an inventive title sequence that seems to set up an engaging plot--a man recovering from the death of his wife struggles to stay connected with his children while the supernatural waits, just over the horizon. Then we arrive at the house, and everything goes to hell. For one thing, the glass mansion, though it is an interesting set, undermines itself in terms of atmosphere. We're told at one point that the mansion is "huge," but without ever seeing the thing as a whole, when the walls of every room are basically indistinguishable from those of the room next to it, we get little idea of the house's scope.

The character development also seems to go on hold as soon as we enter the house, as the script gives none of the actors much to work with. Tony Shalhoub, a genuinely talented actor, gives a performance that is far and away better than the material deserves. A surprise is Matthew Lillard, whom I normally can't stand, but who turns in a performance that is all nervous ticks and whiny uncertainty--it's a different character for him, and I liked his performance. On the other hand, F. Murray Abraham and Embeth Davidtz, both of whom appear only briefly, are wasted, and Shannon Elizabeth I'll damn with faint praise by calling "competent." (Then again, she disappears for what seemed like a third of the movie.)

The script's most unfortunate victim is Rah Digga, who makes a supporting turn as the token black castmember. "Token" is not a word I use lightly here; I don't consider Joe Morton, for example, to have played a token role in What Lies Beneath, where he simply played a character that fit his ability to create characters with calm, authoritative bearing. Thir13en Ghost's character of Maggie, however, exists only to have what might be termed by a movie executive to be "urban" attitude. Come on, people--draw humor from your characters, not from desparate and incongruous one-liners delivered by characters treading dangerously close to stereotype.