THE HAUNTING (1999)
(DreamWorks)
Starring: Lili Taylor, Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Owen Wilson.
Screenplay: David Self, based on the novel _The Haunting of Hill House_
by Shirley Jackson.
Producers: Susan Arnold, Donna Roth and Colin Wilson.
Director: Jan De Bont.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (adult themes, profanity, violence)
Running Time: 110 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
It's too bad there couldn't have been a bit more distance between the
release of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and the making of THE HAUNTING -- then,
at least, director Jan De Bont wouldn't have had an excuse. With recent
history to consider, it may have made a perverse economic sense to turn
Shirley Jackson's supremely creepy story into a special effects-filled
funhouse. Then along comes BLAIR WITCH to prove that you can still rattle
an audience with what might be happening rather than a computer-generated
representation of what is happening. Ironically, BLAIR WITCH owes a debt
to the original 1963 version of THE HAUNTING in its study of the
psychology of fear. Sadly, THE HAUNTING circa 1999 owes a debt to Jan
(TWISTER, SPEED 2) De Bont in its study of thick-headed filmmaking.
An even more bitter irony is that this version of THE HAUNTING
gathers its characters for a study of the psychology of fear. Researcher
Jeffrey Marrow (Liam Neeson) brings together three subjects for an
experiment, telling them only that it's a study of insomnia. His actual
goal is to examine mounting fear and paranoia by placing his trio of
volunteers in the creepy Hill House, a mammoth manor with a dark history.
Nell (Lili Taylor), Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Luke (Owen Wilson) all
soon experience strange phenomena, but it is the emotionally fragile Nell
who experiences them most strongly. She comes to believe that the spirits
of tormented children haunt Hill House, and that she must play a special
role in quieting those spirits.
It's fairly clear from the start that the real star of THE HAUNTING
is the house itself. De Bont sprinkles the film liberally with sweeping
helicopter shots of the sprawling exterior; he prowls through the bending
hallways and pans across cavernous great rooms; he lets cinematographer
Caleb Deschanel bathe the ornate bedrooms in muted oranges and reds.
Eugenio Zanetti's production design is certainly eye-catching, offering
more detail than one could possibly absorb in one sitting, but at a
certain point the sprawling staginess of the house starts to work against
the film. It begins to feel like Disney's Haunted Mansion crossed with
the Winchester Mystery House, a tourist attraction designed more for
spooky giggles than for genuine shivers.
Once the house fails to deliver the creepiness, you're left with the
treatment of the material, which is literalist to the mundane extreme.
Robert Wise's 1963 THE HAUNTING was hardly perfect -- Julie Harris'
hand-wringing fussiness took her Nell too far over the edge from the start
-- but it began from the principle that fear is about anticipation, not
revelation. De Bont has no interest in any such subtleties. Instead of
making a film about the way an environment of terror is more powerful in
imagination than in reality, he makes a film about faces appearing in
pillowcases, leaping skeletons, windows that turn into big staring
eyeballs, and living statues a la Ray Harryhausen. Every bit of subtext
is either turned into in-your-face text (Claire Bloom's ambiguously
flirtatious Theo in the original becomes Catherine Zeta-Jones' "Hi, I'm a
bisexual" Theo) or abandoned (a key piece of Hill House back-story about
a tormented caretaker similar to Nell). With its foundation-shaking
finale and monstrous apparitions, this isn't a remake of THE HAUNTING.
It's a remake of POLTERGEIST.
Of course there's a place for the POLTERGEISTs of cinema. Generally,
however, it helps if that sort of film can tap into something primal, like
scary clowns or menacing trees. THE HAUNTING can't really be classified
as a horror film, because there's nothing remotely horrifying about it,
unless you count the inanely expository dialogue (e.g., a character
reacting to a stairway collapsing: "Look, the stairway is collapsing!").
In fact, it's often downright laughable -- sometimes intentionally (Owen
Wilson's goofball performance), sometimes not (a blissed-out otherworldly
ending that makes GHOST look restrained). De Bont has made a film from
The School of Quips and Money Shots, all flash and chuckle. He's merely
interested in showing off his big-budget toys so everyone can see the
thing that goes ooga-booga. That's a pretty limp take on a tale of the
ooga-boogas inside our heads.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 ghost busters: 4.
Visit Scott Renshaw's Screening Room
http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/
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Have I seen this movie: Yes
And what did I think: The Hanting definately isn't any horror classic, it provided a few cheap thrills but you'll probably snicker more. A lot of critics are bashing this film, while its not the greatest horror movie, there are plenty of worse one out there. I haven't seen the original, so I can't compare the two. The acting in this movie stinks.... the only actor who was halfway decent was Liam Neeson, and he wasn't on screen as much as he should have been. The story is pretty dumb as well... I won't give any plot lines away, but its a no brainer. The only thing this movie had, was some real nice special effects and some suspense. The house itself is pretty spooky and the movie has some nice visuals too. But spending $8 for a movie should let you get something more then nice effects... but it seems that's how a lot of big budget movies are these days. Sacrifice the story for the effects. Nothing too special here, wait for rental.
I give the Haunting 2.5 out of 5 stars
