[.ca] The Haunting (Widescreen) (ISBN 0783246692)

From Amazon.com:
Suffering 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

WRONGLY CLASSIFIED:
The genre should have been comedy. This movie was neither scary, nor mysterious or thrilling. The scariest part to me was probably when Liam Neeson got the class stuck in his hand and had to pull it out. I found myself wondering why good actors such as this would actually agree to take part in this sorry excuse for a horror film. The movie has next to no plot, none of the stuff that happened was explained, and the stuff that was supposed to be scary wasn't. Oh My God it's a statue...let me scream in fear and trip over myself while I'm trying to run away! Skip this tripe.

WHY ?:
Do computer generated things scare you? They don't scare me. Do sets scare you? They don't scare me either. I understand that studios can't make money re-releasing old classics in theatres because of home video but why spend all that money trying to remake or even surpass something that is obviously the sum of its human parts, all of whom you won't or can't reuse? Isn't that like trying to be the first man on the moon - - - -again? Some scriptwriters and directors could make a biscuit and a glass of milk frightening. They used a super computer called talent. Please reboot.

Not for people who love bieng scared to death:
Personally i loved this movie, it was good because it really made you think about it to understand it and it didn't scare me stiff. I don't like really scary movies like scream, and this movie is more thrilling then chilling, i love that about it! also, it has very good special effects, they almost look real! Any way, I very highly recomend this movie!!!

Ho-Hum:
On paper, 'The Haunting' promises to deliver all sorts of traditional horror-flick chills and thrills, and with such a stellar cast, the movie certainly looks like it's going to deliver. Sadly, in reality, this is not the case, and 'The Haunting' rapidly descends into a hodgepodge of stilted momentum and out-of-place histrionics. Dr. David Marrow (Liam Neeson, selling his considerable talent out for a dollar) has assembled a group of sleep-deprived people in a supposedly haunted house to conduct an experiment in the power of suggestion. Of this group, Nell Vance (Lili Taylor) is plagued by sinister forces throughout her stay, and it's up to Dr. Marrow and his other patients, boho-chic Theo (Catherine Z-J) and n'er-do-well playboy Luke (Owen Wilson), to save Nell and themselves from the malevolent spectres haunting the house. None of the cast could be blamed for not doing their level best with a lousy, awkward script. Neeson and Taylor are two of the finest actors working today, and even their portrayals of their own characters come off as insincere and mawkish. Zeta-Jones, an actress of considerable talent, does slightly better in the role of the promiscuous and mysterious Theo, but that's due mainly to the fact that she physically looks the part. The talents of Owen Wilson, too, are lost in a two-dimensional character, lacking both development and sympathy. The locations, you can tell, were intended to be sweeping and absorbing, and a lot of design and research has clearly gone into making the House the real star of the show. Shame, then, that it looks like some sort of anodyne Disney-Fun thrill house, instead of a brooding mansion harbouring dark secrets. The carved faces of the children look like something out of the Addams Family Household, and the legion rooms and chambers are as unbelievable in number as they are overstated in design. Coupled with some laughable special effects (doors and porticoes coming together to make faces, the particularly risible end sequence) the House is merely the lewd, bawdy, amateurish backdrop against which this sad little tale is played out. Direction? Not really. Jan De Bont is responsible for some of the most directorially-accomplished thrillers of our time (Speed, Twister, What Lies Beneath) but has apparently left his thinking cap at home for this one. And to finish, for those of you who may have read the book first, this film lacks any of the subtle psychology or endearing character traits of Shirley Jackson's classic novel noir. It even goes so far as to change the ending from a melancholy and desolate event to a cheap, tawdry Hollywood-Esque 'Big Bang', and by the movie's end, we're left wondering exactly what has happened and why we wasted so much time watching 'The Haunting' at all. A no-brainer of extreme proportions, there are far better examples of this sort of thing available.

Beware of Evil Capitalists (and ghost movies about them):
Some day Lili Taylor will land that role in a film which will show the world what a high-calibre actress she really is. THE HAUNTING is not that film. What a thankless part for Ms. Lili. What a thankless film. The scariest thing about this movie must have been the bill for the c.g.i. effects that the studio received. I mean, the movie had a moment or two of tension, but on the whole, I was bored. There was nothing new here: the fury of an evil, dead capitalist and the pain inflicted on his mostly children workers--and his family--just can't seem to get out of the house. So! The evil men do does live on! How original! I'm reaching for sarcasm which is never pretty, so I will end here. This movie was the pits.