Review of The Haunting (1999) by Rebecca H — 21 Jul 2009

I have seen the original film, and I hated it. So I wasn't sure what to expect with the remake. What made it harder to form an opinion, was watching it with a person who loves the original, and felt the need to pause the film every few seconds to explain how it wasn't as good. I really do think the original is ludicrous, dated and lame. However, the remake is also pants, just in a new way.

Dr Marrow (Liam Neeson) gets three insomniacs to come to a big house with a troubled history, pretending to want to cure insomnia but really intending to study fear. Why his endeavour to cure the crippling effect fear gives us involves studying how the mind plays tricks after hearing a creepy story, and scaring a bunch of insomniacs is going to help, is never explained. He also doesn't do any tests on the insomniacs, none to do with sleep anyway, so it is rather unclear how they fall for it.

As the characters turn up at the house, some dreadfully over the top music, more at home in the camp original, plays; suggesting instantly that the director has no grasp on what is scary or subtle.

Nell (Lili Taylor) and Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones) run around the house enjoying themselves and Nell finds it all beautiful. This is a rare moment of the film working, as it is far scarier for something one likes to scare, than something one is already averse to.

However, there is a drastic lack of reaction - no one jumps when they turn to face an evil-looking statue. Once ghosts appear and walls come alive, the reaction drops further, as if the director forgot to tell the actors what they are supposed to be looking at (as it is all filled in with cgi) and it becomes staggeringly unclear whether the characters can see what we can.

The 'state-of-the-art special effects' are a mistake. Instead of things moving off screen - such as looking at a statue, looking away and it being slightly different - did it move or are you mad? Ooh, scary - things move while we look and evil faces float around chatting to Nell. It isn't scary, it isn't subtle and it looks stupid. Everyone involved in this film has no concept of terror. This film is at no point scary and that's all there is to it.

Now again, I'm not a fan of the first film - it is far too hammy, however, why the remake chooses to cut the subplots that lead to Nell going mad is quite baffling. What exactly else is there to the story? Although they set up Nell having to care for her sick mother who bangs on the wall, no more does this connect to the past of Hill House, so why mention it at all? No more is there suspicion of whether she let her mother die. No more is there a romance between her and the doctor, which is the trigger for her snapping sanity. No, all that is gone. Instead, she comes up with a lame theory that the baby ghosts in the house want her to look after them. First, this isn't scary because she isn't scared and wants to help them, so bit of a dumb idea in a horror film, second, exactly how does she think she can help them? Only a scene before, she was incapacitated by a bed, and third, since the other three characters return to the house to save her, it is all her fault that one of them needlessly and shockingly dies.

This is the only moment of the film that affected me because it was completely unexpected. Since the character survived the original, I was not expecting the abrupt, ludicrous and unnecessary demise. I remained in shock for the few minutes of film that remained. And, since Nell and the baby ghosts all float off to Heaven, why don't we see the other character's ghost?

This is rubbish - it isn't scary, it is badly written and it relies on lame cgi monsters instead of suspense and actually being creepy. But it doesn't have the overpoweringly, awful, suffocating narration that sank and drowned the original, and for that, I am ever grateful.