Review of The Haunting (1999) by David W — 08 Feb 2012

The story is about Eleanor played by Lili Taylor who goes to a haunted house with Dr.David Marrow played by the famous Liam Neeson to study sleep disorders and brings a couple of her friends, Theo played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luke played by comedian Owen Wilson.

when later David realizes that his experiment has gone too far, He reveals that he actually brought them to a haunted house without knowing the house was haunted to study their fear and also there's this big evil ghost named Crain where he wants to kill all the innocent ghosts whereas in the original, it was actually a woman who was trapped in a house and died from her psychosis.

So Eleanor literally defeats her with the power of love and we get the "Jumping The Shark" moment as Owen Wilson gets his head chopped off. What a disappointment! The film was directed by Jan de Bont who worked his life mostly as a cinematographer until he went into directing and writing with Speed, he could have made good movies from there but instead went downhill with Speed 2, Twister, this movie and the Tomb Raider sequel which was his last movie ever.

The Haunting (1999) gets a 4/10.