EXORCIST: THE BEGINING: When Father Lankester Merrin arrived to expunge a troublesome demon from Regan MacNeil in the original EXORCIST movie, many viewers were left cowering in fear. But questions remained as to the true identity of the mysterious Merrin, and how he rose to become such a potent force in the battle against demonic possession. For inquisitive fans still fervently pondering the unfathomable Merrin, help is at hand in the shape of this prequel film, EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING. In the post-World War II world, Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard) has seen his faith lapse due to some tumultuous firsthand experiences on the battlefield. Taking a lengthy sabbatical in an attempt to rekindle his belief, Merrin travels to East Africa. While there, he encounters an archaeological team who have uncovered a Byzantine-era church which, astonishingly, shows no visible signs of decay. Upon investigating the remarkable find, Merrin happens upon a crypt beneath the church, and inadvertently unleashes the same omnipotent demon that he duels with in the first EXORCIST movie. The local villagers unwittingly succumb to the powerful otherworldly force, and as chaos breaks out, Merrin experiences a cruel sense of irony when the very horrors he sought to escape engulf him once more.THIRTEEN GHOSTS: 13 GHOSTS, Steve Beck's feature debut, is the second recent remake (following THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL) of a film by 1950s and 60s camp horror king, William Castle. Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub) is a financially strapped widower struggling to raise two children, Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth) and Bobby (Alec Roberts), after losing his wife in a house fire. A stroke of apparent luck arrives when Arthur learns he has inherited a mansion from his mysterious Uncle Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham). Ecstatic, Arthur whisks the kids and nanny, Maggie (Rah Digga) off to their new home, a bizarre glass and steel structure with strange Latin inscriptions carved on the walls. The family is thrilled, until a psychic and former employee of Cyrus', Rafkin (Matthew Lillard), reveals that Arthur's departed uncle was a power hungry ghost collector who captured twelve spirits in the house. Arthur is skeptical. But when his children disappear, and Rafkin gives him a pair of special glasses that allow him to view the house's gruesome inhabitants, he believes. In Beck's special effects-laden gore-fest, the two men race against time to find the children as the house's strange internal mechanism begins sealing off the exits and freeing the angry ghosts.