THE HAUNTING
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: What starts as a new version of THE
HAUNTING mixes in aspects of THE UNINVITED and THE
LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE. Eventually director Jan de
Bont gives in to the temptation to excess and his
film turns into POLTERGEIST. Still enough is worth
seeing here, particularly for the beautiful
production design by Eugenio Zanetti. Jan de Bont
was the wrong person to direct, but the film still
succeeds in raising gooseflesh thanks in large part
to the atmosphere created by Zanetti. Rating: 7 (0
to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)
For me there are three ghost stories on film that I would put in my first tier-these are the best. Those are THE UNINVITED, THE INNOCENTS, and THE HAUNTING (1963). The second tier would include THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, THE CHANGELING, and THE LADY IN WHITE. There would probably be a few others. The third tier would probably include POLTERGEIST, effective but a little soul-less. In interviews about the new THE HAUNTING from The Dreamworks, this second film based on the novel THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson, director Jan de Bont (SPEED, TWISTER) said that he was not really approaching this as a horror film. What he wanted was to make was a different sort of action film. Audiences are tired of traditional crime action films, but not many have been done as horror. Given that that is the case, it is remarkable that the new THE HAUNTING is as good as it is at raising gooseflesh. For now I would put it in the second tier. I may or may not feel that positive on the film in five years. Time and again de Bont does wrong what director Robert Wise did so very right in the 1963 version. Part of what made the original film effective is that the main character was weak. We could empathize with her rather than admire her and we saw the film from inside her head, even to the point of hearing her thoughts. The horror in the 1963 version is almost all heard rather than seen. There is just a hint that is visual that any of this is really happening. Wise had to use very three-dimensional characters to make the people and the threat to them seem real. Today's younger action audience might not have responded to that, so instead de Bont gives us some strong characters and the scariest haunted house money can buy. There are more special effects in the trailer to the new film than Wise put into the entirety of his version.
Eleanor Lance (played by Lili Taylor) gets an invitation to be part of a sleep study by Dr. Jeffrey Marrow (Liam Neeson). The study will have her staying in a huge old mansion dating back to 1837. The house was built by a textile magnate and was the scene of much unhappiness. Eleanor's fellow test subjects include the seductive Theodora (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and the irreverent Luke Sannerson (Owen Wilson). What none of the subjects knows is that the study is not about sleep but about fear. Marrow is intentionally putting them into a frightening house to observe their reaction. As Marrow says "you don't tell the rats the rats will be in a maze." But the house may be scarier than he realizes. Even Marrow does not know the full history of evil in this house or of the spirits of the original master among others who still make the house their home. While starting with the plot from the book and the original film, this plot goes off in some new directions. Jerry Goldsmith makes his own comment on the profusion of haunting phenomena we see in this film by starting his end-credit music with a carnival theme.
There are far too many touches in this film that just seem weak after having seen the Robert Wise version (two nights earlier, in fact). In the original the groundskeeper and housekeeper seem to have been taken over by the spirit of the house and themselves seem to be a bit haunted. In this version they just come off as mean. Bruce Dern plays the groundskeeper as just his usual nasty, bullying character. It is not as effective as weaker-than-the-house characters in the original. But de Bont has a hard time doing weak characters. This version makes much more use of the early residents of Hill House, particularly the industrialist who built it and who here looks a lot like the early makeup designs for THE PLANET OF THE APES. De Bont replaces the mysterious seductive evil of the house with too great an abundance of strange phenomena. If Hill House is getting this treatment from the spirits, are not there a lot of places in which greater evils occurred. Why do we not see this degree of haunting more places?
The production design is credited to Eugenio Zanetti. If that name does not sound familiar consider that he performed the same function on such beautiful films as FLATLINERS, RESTORATION, and WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. Zanetti won the Academy Award for set design for RESTORATION and was nominated (and deserved to win) for WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. The Hill House he designed would be a dominating spirit even if there were no haunting. I hope Jan de Bont realizes how very much he owes to Zanetti for making this film as good as it is.
This version of THE HAUNTING would be a better film by another name. On its own it is actually quite a good ghost story about what is the most incredibly haunted house the screen has yet seen. By inviting comparison to one of the three best ghost stories on film, this action- oriented version comes up a poor second. But if we had to have a graphic version of Jackson's novel, this is far better than any we could have expected. I give it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews