Review of The Haunting (1999) by Mohamed A — 24 Nov 2012

A great cast (Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Owen Wilson, Lili Taylor, Bruce Dern, Virginia Madsen) is wasted in this poorly directed piece of bland Hollywood horror. Director Jan de Bont wrongly choses to go with his "Speed" aesthetic of fast and loud instead of going for atmosphere and suspense.

"Speed" is really the only good film de Bont ever made, and most of what made that film good was Joss Whedon doing a major uncredited rewrite. The script for "The Haunting" isn't bad and takes a lot of it's cues from the original film version of the Shirley Jackson tale.

The Jerry Goldsmith also delivers and effectively creepy and scary score. It's really de Bont who deserves blame for the film's utter failure, mostly due to his lack of knowing how to create suspense or a decent scare.

The power of director Robert Wise's original film was the chilling atmosphere and smartly framing the story so that it is never clear, even at the very end, whether there was ever anything supernatural happening in the house or whether it was all in the heads of the characters.

In this version, a supernatural presence is established very early (with the gross overuse of CGI) and quickly becomes completely overflow and lacking in any subtlety. The remake of "House on Haunted Hill" and "13 Ghosts" were actually better than this one.

I remember hating this in the theater, but wanted to give it another chance. It did not deserve a second chance. If you wan tho see a fine film about a haunting that came out just two years later, watch "The Others" instead.