The Haunting
by Jan de Bont
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DVD details
Actor: Bruce Dern, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Liam Neeson, Lili Taylor, Owen WilsonDirector: Jan de Bont
Brand: Universal Studios
Producer: Jan de Bont
Producer: Colin Wilson
Producer: Donna Roth
Producer: Marty P. Ewing
Producer: Samuel Z. Arkoff
Writer: David Self
Writer: Shirley Jackson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 113 minutes
Published: 1999-11-01
DVD Release Date: 1999-11-23
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Dreamworks Video
DVD Reviews of The Haunting
DVD Review: The Humorous Haunting Of Humongous Hill House
Summary: 1 Stars
The Haunting is a movie originally made in 1963, based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting Of Hill House (1959). The story is about four paranormal investigators who spend time at Hill House, a 90-year old mansion in New England that is said to be haunted. During their stay, they find out over time that the house really is haunted. The house seems alive and it wants to keep one of the investigators, Eleanor, in the house.
Fast forward 36 years to 1999. A remake was made.
I watched this 1999 remake of The Haunting on YouTube from start to finish (a big thank you to the person who uploaded it). I had never seen it before tonight. I definitely wasn't missing anything (except maybe Lili Taylor's good looks). This was a pointless remake of the classic 1963 original and it fails on all levels. Robert Wise got it right in This 1999 remake? It's equivalent to trying to remake The Wizard Of Oz. Better yet, I felt like I was watching an elementary school play called The Haunting, except the actors were adults. Don't mess with the classics, that's what I say. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Too often, the movie makers fall all over themselves when they remake classic movies. But we all know the real motivation behind the remake$. It's $$$$$. They always say it's to introduce the young people of today to old classic movies. My philosophy is this: JUST SHOW THEM THE ORIGINAL!!!! But that would make too much sense. They also have to throw in the CGI special effects, otherwise boredom will set in on the young audience. And they MUST be color movies. No black and white - that's a no-no.
What's wrong with this movie? EVERYTHING! This movie compared to the original is like comparing apples and oranges. First of all, Shirley Jackson's story was completely massacred in this remake. The original movie stays faithful to the novel. The remake, on the other hand, doesn't. This remake movie is so different than the original movie, but every once in a while you'll hear a familiar line from the original. Very weird. Secondly, the movie is in color. Color isn't nearly as effective as black and white for this type of movie. Of course the movies of today are going to be in color, but if you're going to remake The Haunting at all, give at least SOME consideration to shooting in black and white.
The acting for the most part is wooden. The actors in this 1999 movie don't come anywhere near the actors in the 1963 original in acting ability and screen presence. Catherine Zeta-Jones (who plays Theo) has an air about her that suggests that she thinks she's so sexy. This is the character she's playing. Unfortunately, she's not nearly as good as Claire Bloom from the original. Lili Taylor (who plays Eleanor) tries hard but falls short of the performance of Julie Harris. To me, Lili looks like a young Jamie Lee Curtis. She seems to be training for the 200 meter dash throughout this movie, perhaps for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. They made her a different character altogether, too - she's a lot nicer than Nell from the original. Liam Neeson isn't nearly as good as Richard Johnson in the role of Dr. John Markway or whatever his name is in this remake (I believe it's Dr. Marrow). Plus, he looks bored and totally out of place, like he's just going through the motions and collecting his paycheck. Maybe he was just physically and mentally drained from all those light sabre fights in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). Owen Wilson is no Russ Tamblyn. Those pajamas are, well, funny. I thought he'd never calm down and catch his breath after Liam Neeson unintentionally scared him. What's with the "carnival" room that spins around? Hill House seems like it's a haunted attraction and an amusement park rolled into one. I'll stop there, because it just gets worse. Actually, one more thing - Mrs. Dudley in this movie isn't nearly as scary as in the original. When Mrs. Dudley says the famous line "In the night...in the dark" for a second time, Eleanor actually finishes the sentence for her. By Eleanor doing this, it destroys and cheapens one of the classic lines from the original movie. Basically, Eleanor is making fun of Mrs. Dudley's sentence instead of being frightened or concerned about it. I also notice that the characters seem thin, like they lack depth. They're just sort of there, saying their lines from a bad script that was given to them. They look like they don't know what to do half the time. It's equivalent to teenagers from a slasher film who are just set up to be killed by a psycho stalker. No character development. Plus, what's with the argument between Zeta-Jones and Neeson? Very weird. It even turns physical.
Hill House looks more like a gothic castle than a haunted mansion, and it's HUGE. I don't know how anybody can actually live there. The place is humongous. The fireplace looks like it would devour anybody who goes near it. The doors in the place seem like they're 20 feet high. Everything in this movie is BIG, OVERDONE, and OBVIOUS compared to the original.
Black and white is the way to go for a movie like this. In the original movie, Robert Wise brilliantly used black and white with unique camera angles and shadows and lighting to create a haunted atmosphere. In this remake, color was used and it ruins the atmosphere. The CGI effects? Totally cheesy and funny. I was laughing throughout most of the movie, saying, "What IS this?" When you try to make radical changes to a classic, forget it. You've already struck out. In this movie, you actually SEE the ghosts. They also appear in weird, contorted forms and all shapes and sizes, even underneath curtains, bed sheets, and a fist through a door. Weird...and funny. This movie is pretty much like watching Scooby Doo (fun and frights combined), except Scooby Doo is more frightening. You didn't see the ghosts in the original movie. You just knew they were there. It's what you can't see that is so scary. That's how it should be.
A skeleton that comes alive? This stuff is straight out of a homemade basement haunted house made by 8-year olds.
The lesbian relations between Eleanor and Theo is more apparent and obvious in this movie than in the original. This movie leaves nothing to the imagination. Obvious lesbian relations, obvious ghosts, obvious haunts, etc. Upon their first meeting, it takes Theo a matter of seconds to let Eleanor know she's a lesbian. She basically "came out" as soon as she met Eleanor. In the original the lesbianism was more implied than obvious. It left the viewer to wonder if it existed at all.
I find it interesting that this remake was made 36 years after the original came out. Usually when remakes are done, it's 20, 25, 30, 40, 50 years later. In this situation, it was an oddball 36 years later, in 1999. Maybe the makers of this movie were afraid that Y2K would prevent them from using their beloved CGI effects, so they rushed the movie into production and made the movie an oddball 36 years after the original and released it in 1999, months before the December 31, 1999 Y2K concern (and massive fraud, by the way)! I'm joking, but you never know...
Now, I'll mention some strong points to this movie. The atmosphere WAS creepy in a lot of scenes. The portraits on the walls added a very haunting feeling, as did the cherubs sometimes. Some of the lighting added some creepiness. The movie IS visually stunning in a lot of places. But overall, this movie can't hold a Hill House candle to the original.
The last half hour of the movie is what really brings the movie down. Suddenly it's over-the-top CGI mania. A complete Cheese Fest.
If you like the classic original movie from 1963, don't bother with this 1999 remake. Terrible. It should be renamed The Humorous Haunting Of Humongous Hill House. If Shirley Jackson was still around I wonder what she would think of this disaster of a movie. I give this movie a very generous 1 star.
Description of The Haunting
HAUNTING - DVD MovieSuffering from the extreme bad luck of being released at the same time as the low-budget The Blair Witch Project, this adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House attempts to update Shirley Jackson's psychologically terrifying ghost story to the era of big-budget, computerized special effects. Does it work? Well, let's just say that showing isn't exactly the same as telling. A prime example of bloated studio filmmaking, The Haunting telegraphs all its frights so blatantly that it forsakes any of Jackson's subtle horrors for the remedial scares of a clunky carnival ride. The story remains basically the same, with four people called to an old mansion for experiments in the supernatural, but instead of getting inside the heads of its main characters (as the 1963 adaptation by Robert Wise did so well), Jan DeBont's film deserts character development for the huge, glorious set design provided by Eugenio Zanetti (Restoration). Thus, instead of a well-drawn story you get... a well-drawn house, one that four very talented and underutilized actors--Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Liam Neeson, and Owen Wilson--wander around in endlessly (as Zeta-Jones puts it, the house is "sort of Charles Foster Kane meets the Munsters"). Taylor, as the hypersensitive Nell, is the unknowing lynchpin in the battle between good and bad ghosts and gets saddled with most of the expository dialogue of the mansion's gothic backstory. Zeta-Jones (showing some spark) and Neeson (showing none) are sadly reduced to providing reactionary shots of the film's disastrous climax, which mixes hapless new-age affirmations with computer-generated effects of ghosts and exploding windows, walls, doors, etc. For this haunted-house story, take a quick tour of the breathtaking rooms, but definitely don't stay the night. --Mark Englehart
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