The Haunting is another one of those interesting Hollywood films (and there have been a lot lately!) that looks very stunning visually, but falls apart when it comes to storyline and character departments.

The Haunting is apparently a remake of an older movie called The Haunting of Hill House, which in itself was based on a novel by Shirley Jackson of the same name. Liam Neeson stars as a psychological doctor investigating the scientific realms of the human response known as fear. The doctor's idea is to bring together a group of insomniacs to see how they would react under stressful, fearful and controlled situations. Because of his experiment and his need for control, he chooses to have them stay at Hill House, which is an old, large and strangely beautiful mansion in the middle of nowhere.

Once our odd group of characters are assembled at Hill House, the fun begins! The house is haunted by a deadly and strange curse, and it slowly takes advantage of the group's feelings and begins to terrorize them. Of course, the doctor at first believes the responses of his guests to be all part of his controlled experiment, but slowly learns that their responses aren't just part of his experiment. And then, the fun continues!

The Haunting looks great, the sets are extraordinarily grand, mixing many old-style European influences to make a whole. And the special effects are good too, but, the directing is rather poorly done, the pace is off for a movie of it's subject matter. It plays too slow when things should be fast, and it plays too fast when things should be slow. And on top of that, to be perfectly honest, the movie isn't that scary to begin with. I've been more scared during some episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, and the obviously darker tv show Millennium. I just didn't care about the characters in The Haunting to care about their predicament(s).

Why didn't the writers spend more time developing the characters to give the movie a greater depth of reality, thereby giving the audience something to truly be afraid of. Why didn't they play up the lesbian undertones between Catherine Zeta-Jones' character, Theo and Lili Taylor's character, Eleanor? Eleanor has been away from life, so even though at first she may be repulsed by the idea, why wouldn't she still consider it an option of exploration or escape? Why didn't they play up on the fact that there were two women and only one man - why not have him caught in the middle? Why didn't they emphasize and develop the mother-character hidden in Eleanor, making her more of a person than a character sketch? And the foreshadowing that occurs before Eleanor leaves her apartment is too obvious and too basic to be believable, it's almost stereotype of your typical all-American grandmother.

Unfortunately no avenues are explored in terms of character in The Haunting, and when you are shooting for psychological horror you need the characters to attach you to the situation. Only then can you truly be scared. That's why movies such as The Silence of the Lambs, and Beloved work. They give you fleshed out characters that you can care about before it turns up the heat and brings in the unexpected and the outrageousness that drives the story forward. None of that is done here. The movie does verge on the brink of doing it, but more time should have been given to fleshing out the script, and then, maybe we'd have a movie worth watching.

Grade: C

(c) July 23, 1999, Steven H. Lee



Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age