The Haunting (1999)

I went into this movie with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I've hated every movie Jan de Bont has directed. On the other hand, the trailers made this movie look pretty damn cool. Which one of those was going to win out over the other? Well my reaction was somewhere in between, but much closer to cool than hate.

The premise is pretty simple. Dr. Jeffrey Marrow is conducting an experiment on the biology of fear. To this end he finds three candidates for his study, all of whom are imformed that it is a study of insomnia. They all travel to Hill House for the study. Dr. Marrow wants to use the creepy house and some well planted suggestions to see how they react. What the good doctor doesn't know is that the house really is haunted.

The house deserves top billing in this movie. It steals scenes from the actors. I'm not talking about the special effects, I'll get to them later. I mean that the design of this house is mind boggling. It's kind of like going to see a historic building and just staring in amazement at the detail that was put into a room. This house is like that. The details and the incredible numbers of them demand your attention. There is a scene where Nell is being taken to her room. She keeps stopping to stare at things in the rooms. The person leading her to her room keeps clearing her throat to indicate that she needs to keep moving. It's a good scene because the viewer is suffering much the same problem.

The human actors do a fine job. Liam Neeson turns in his usual solid performance. Catherine Zeta-Jones continues to be great to look at, but unlike Entrapment she actually does some acting this time. Owen Wilson provides some needed levity. The star (human that is) of the movie is Lili Taylor though. I haven't seen much of her before, but she should get a lot more high profile parts after this movie, she was wonderful.

The movie takes its time, slowly introducing the cast and the house. It starts to add some creaks and groans to make things creepy. It moves up to loud noises and unseen movement. Finally when it has built up the tension well, all hell breaks loose. This is when the special effects appear and in great numbers. Their use is heavily restrained through much of the movie, but no restraint at all is used at the end. The house literally comes alive. All those details which made the place a bit creepy to begin with are now downright hostile.

All of this worked pretty well for me. It wasn't scaring me at all, but it did manage to get me involved. The real problem was that the story seemed to get a bit muddled toward the end. Nell has a definite connection to this house. Unfortunately, the connection is poorly spelled out. Mostly she just blurts it out. It's fairly unclear how she comes to realize all of this and why it means so much to her. The timing is bad here. As you scratch your head, trying to sort this stuff out, the special effects suddenly come into play. At a point in the movie where you should be swept along by the images in front of you, you're instead left grounded by that confusion.

All in all it's not a bad film and it's certainly several notches above what passes for horror these days. I suspect that it will be unfairly lumped in with most other recent horror films after The Blair Witch Project goes into wide release. The Haunting is one of the better attempts Hollywood has made at horror in recent years. It wouldn't be right to associate it with those more ill-fated attempts.

- John Shea