While watching this remake of "The Haunting," I began to wonder how this film would fare if it was not a remake, but just another haunted house story. In other words, what if this was the first film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel, forgetting that the 1963 Robert Wise classic ever existed?
Let's look at the particulars. Independent film queen Lili Taylor is Ellen, the morose, mousy woman invited to Hill House where a special study is being conducted by a doctor (Liam Neeson) on insomnia. The other guests, or subjects, are the blonde surfer dude Luke (Owen Wilson - who looks like a surfer dude even if he isn't one) and the sexual cat, Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a bisexual who comforts Ellen and is thus teased by Luke. Oh, and did I notice the quick departure of Todd Fields as another subject? I suppose, I did. Maybe he was called in for some reshoots in Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut."
I am sorry but this film hints at disaster from the get-go, and if this had been the first adaptation, it would have surely spelled doom for future fright fests. The fact is that "The Haunting" is directed by Jan De Bont, who helmed the exciting "Speed" and "Speed 2," the latter of which I have avoided. To be fair, the first hour of "The Haunting" captures a sense of spookiness and quiet calm that made the original so memorable. I mean, there are actually no special-effects! The characters are somewhat interesting if buffonish and detached. Zeta-Jones makes a sparkling entrance as she proclaims with a luscious, breathless voice upon entering Hill House: "Don't you just love it here? You don't get this from a Martha Stewart catalog." Neeson shows a little gleam, and shows interest in Taylor's Ellen who has her own demons to confront. Wilson has a few one-liners to offset the creepy dimensions of the inevitable haunting. Dare I say, this movie was starting to look like a classic! ! ghost story. But then...all hell is unleashed.
De Bont unleashes one special-effects gimmick after another, never alluding to or insinuating the mysterious forces within the house. Instead, he shows us everything and anything. The final half-hour is especially laughable as the main demonic spirit crashes the house in a digital FX blowout of collapsing frames, cracked windows, contorted beds, split floorboards - it is all so outrageously banal that it makes the locust finale of "Exorcist II" look frightful by comparison.
Since De Bont shows us only gaping actors staring at FX galore, we never feel as if this house is truly haunted - it feels like William Castle put on an expensive light show at Universal Studios. Sure, the art decoration and set design of the house is spectacular but hardly suggests that lurking shadows or ghosts inhabit it. And with scarce insight into any of the characters, "The Haunting" becomes an interminable void of faux fright cliches.
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