In theaters

“13 Ghosts,” directed by Steve Beck, written by Neal Marshall Stevens and Richard D’Ovidio. 90 minutes. Rated R.

The new horror movie “13 Ghosts” comes from Robert Zemeckis’ and Joel Silver’s Dark Castle Entertainment, which bombed in 1999 with their critically condemned and financially ruinous remake of William Castle’s 1958 film “The House on Haunted Hill.”

Since this is Hollywood, where logic is as scarce as a real blond or a good script, it makes perfect sense that Zemeckis and Silver would ignore their prior mistakes and belly up to the cineplex to repeat them. Dipping back into Castle’s bag, they found the director’s 1960 camp horror film “13 Ghosts,” hired Neal Marshall Stevens and Richard D’Ovidio to rewrite it, and asked commercial and music video director Steve Beck to direct it.

My condolences to those of you who’ve actually seen it.

From the start, “13 Ghosts” is an unrelenting wreck, a bombastic juggernaut that hammers away at the screen like a 2-year-old brat banging on a metal pot.

Its ongoing blast of strobe lights, rapid jump cuts and blaring noise are meant to generate energy and rouse the senses, but all they really create are headaches, eye strain and nausea. There were moments in this movie when I wanted to throw sedatives at the screen, anything to slow it down or to stop it from assailing the senses.

But there’s no stopping it. Leaning hard on his music video background, Beck has delivered an empty film that can’t sit still, a movie that is so choppy and frenetic it makes the crazed opening of “Moulin Rouge” seem sublimely subdued.

In the film, Arthur Kritocos (Tony Shalhoub), a widower with two kids (Shannon Elizabeth and Alec Roberts) and a streetwise nanny (Rah Digga), is on the financial skids. But when Arthur’s wealthy, eccentric Uncle Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham) dies and leaves them a fantastic house made of glass, things start to look up.

Or at least they do until the family realizes the house is haunted with 12 ghosts looking to kick some butt. Locked in glass containment cubes, the ghosts, which can only be seen through special glasses, have been entombed by Cyrus for a strange Satanic ritual that involves a spinning wheel called the Black Zodiac. When the Black Zodiac receives its 13th soul, its revolutions will be complete and the newly resurrected Cyrus will have the power to rule the world.

There isn’t enough dry ice in the world to conceal the rot of stupidity hovering over “13 Ghosts.” With Embeth Davidtz and Matthew Lillard both overacting to a lower power in supporting roles, there apparently also aren’t enough acting coaches.

Grade: D-

On video and DVD

“The Exorcist,” directed by William Friedkin. Written by William Peter Blatty, based on his novel. 132 minutes. Rated R.

William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” on the other hand, is a horror movie that understands the psychology of fear and uses it to generate real terror, suspense and horror.

Within weeks of its 1973 release, the film was denounced by Billy Graham, championed by the Catholic church, embraced by critics and audiences, and, in the end, by the Academy Awards, where it won for two of 10 nominations.

It came during the last golden age of Hollywood and it was groundbreaking, a movie that shook audiences with its depiction of a sweet 12-year-old girl named Regan (Linda Blair) whose soul is gradually – then violently – possessed by the devil.

Everything that happens to Regan – the head spinning, the projectile vomiting, the levitations, those blasphemous, bloody plunges with the crucifix and her wonderfully raunchy mouth (dubbed by Mercedes McCambridge) – is window dressing. Indeed, “The Exorcist” isn’t so much about Regan’s physical transformation as it is about the spiritual transformation of her mother and the priest who comes to help them.

Superbly played by Ellen Burstyn, Regan’s mother, the popular actress Chris MacNeil, finds herself caught between the concrete world of medical science and, for her, the more foreign world of religion.

When it’s suggested that Regan have an exorcism, Chris turns to Father Karras (Jason Miller), a man fighting his own demons after his mother’s death. With its relationships established, the film then becomes Chris and Karras’ journey into themselves with Regan’s possession used as the catalyst for change and personal reawakening.

Besides its terrific performances, what’s so great about “The Exorcist” is how the film is in no hurry to get to the meat of its horror. Unlike so many of today’s horror movies, the film isn’t exploitative. First and foremost, it’s about characters, people we come to care about before their lives are viciously torn apart on screen.

As in all movies, it’s that element that makes the difference.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.