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Very haunting, that is. If you have already seen, and enjoyed, director Jan de Bont’s (Speed, Twister) remake of the classic black & white ghost story, then you might as well skip this bit, because what follows is a thorough trashing of the worst big-budget movie to come along in a while.
The original was lensed by Robert Wise, a masterful director whose career spanned not only several decades but several genres, from science fiction (The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Andromeda Strain) to combat (Run Silent, Run Deep, The Sand Pebbles) to one of the best-loved musical in Hollywood history, West Side Story. When he made a foray into horror with The Haunting in 1963, he managed to frighten several years’ growth out of legions of moviegoers without even showing anything. No visible monsters or ghosts, no bleeding walls, nothing but story, sound, camera, drama, and one slightly bulging door.
Ah, but subtlety in cinema these days is about as rare as the coelacanth, similarly waiting to be rediscovered, though hopefully not in the depths of the Indian Ocean. And de Bont’s idea of understatement is a chainsaw pedicure, so what we get in the remake -- which hails from Spielberg & Co.’s Dreamworks SKG, by the way -- is a big...make that really big, muddled digital mess that at worst looks more like a horror parody, at best a half-assed thrill ride from a third rate amusement park: “Welcome to Two-and-a-Half Flags Over Butte. We hope you’ll take the time to check out the latest attraction...”
Ostensibly seeking to update the proceedings, this version yanks all the quiet undercurrents from the story and replaces them with Jerry Springer topics. Whereas the original revolved around four people gathered in an infamous New England mansion to seek out the truth behind its rumored visitations, this time a research doctor (Liam Neeson) hopes to study the pathology of fear by summoning three insomniacs to Hill House under the guise of a sleep disorder study, and instead scaring the living bejeebers out of them: “You don’t tell the rats they’re actually in a maze.” Claire Bloom’s portrayal of Theodora as an elegantly wry lesbian becomes Catherine-Zeta Jones’ flaming bisexual. Julie Harris’ guilt-mongering Eleanor is now indie icon Lili Taylor’s babbling nutball. Worst of all is the transformation of Hill House itself from a looming, shadowy menace to a $10 million dollar collection of sets that looks like the Biltmore House on acid, or, as Theo says in the film’s one astute line of dialogue, “Charles Foster Kane meets ‘The Munsters,’” chock full of secret doors, clockwork traps, hidden staircases, and mirrored rooms. If you’ve seen any advance trailers for the film, it becomes impossible to notice any of Hill House’s elaborate carvings, castings, or statuary and think, “I wonder how long before that comes to life and goes ‘boo?’” And they do. A bed grows arms, a wall sprouts eyes, a fireplace bites the head off the film’s only sympathetic character, and every square yard of windblown muslin left over from Twister serves to announce any ethereal presence -- all to great unintentional comic effect.
That’s not just my opinion. The audience at the show I saw laughed at several inopportune times, such as when the cast first sees a massive portrait of the estate’s rich builder, who was apparently the inspiration for the X-Men’s Wolverine. By the time Lili Taylor unveiled the script’s big, new secret, everybody around me was going, “Oh, please...” Worst of all, Bruce Dern, the scariest living American now that Richard Nixon is dead, is given nothing to do but unlock a gate.
Maybe one of these days Jan de Bont will learn there’s more to a movie than aerobics. D-
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