Overall Rating
  Awesome: 6.67%
Worth A Look: 5.33%
Average: 9.33%
Pretty Bad: 17.33%
Total Crap: 61.33%
11 reviews, 159 user ratings
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| Haunting, The (1999) |
by Chef ADogg
"Gives new meaning to the term 'No brainer'"
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"The Haunting" is a scary movie minus the scariness (not much of a surprise--when's the last time you saw a big budget movie that actually scared you?). At best, it's a pale carbon copy of "The Shining," though that's not even saying much.In my book, "The Shining" is not a horror masterpiece but the bones of a horror masterpiece--in adapting the novel for the screen, Kubrick laid bare Stephen King's original plot, stripping the characters of complexity and the story of heart. If one is to watch "The Shining" before reading it, parts may be scary, but after these parts are explained in the book (and the fog of confusion is destroyed), Kubrick's film is painfully simple.
"The Haunting" is similarly excruciating. The plot focuses on three insomniacs lured to a haunted house by a doctor with shady ulterior motives (it's already been given away in the commercials that the insomnia angle is just a front for the true study, that of a group's reaction to fear). The biggest part goes to Lili Taylor, a superb indie actress who should be famous by now but won't get anywhere if she keeps doing shitty would-be blockbusters like this Jan De Bont helmed mess. She quivers, she whimpers, and finally she yells, but Taylor is given absolutely nothing to work with. Instead of a complex and layered performance (she would have been better to focus on nuance instead of grand theatrics), she hams half heartedly.
Catherine Zeta Jones shows up to flaunt her magnificent breasts, and Owen Wilson has a small part (he's there mostly to make asinine wisecracks and reference "Teletubbies"), but they're just window dressing. Liam Neeson, who I once upon a time mistook for a serious actor, growls and furrows his eyebrows in an attempt to look menacing.
De Bont has created a funhouse that's just no fun--in the opening scenes, when the characters roam around the great mansion, it should be frisky and adventurous. Due to the smooth, sweeping cinematography (the camera is always, always on point) and lack of punch, it just feels dreary. Likewise the "smashing" finale, when the computer generated effects take over and the "surprise" ending is revealed (the twist manages to be both mundane and coming-out-nowhere surprising--you knew all along it, or something similar, was waiting under the surface to pop up).
As with most horror films, the characters do plenty of stupid and illogical things, but the movie itself is so simple and see through that I could actually forgive it--I can believe the characters are dumb enough to make such retarded moves if they're too damn blind to realize they're in a horror movie.I'm going to give "The Haunting" one star, which it doesn't even deserve, really. It gets it, though, for two reasons: A) there's no zero star option, and B) it scared the hell out of my girlfriend. And you gotta like that.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1581&reviewer=123
originally posted: 07/26/99 05:27:59
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USA
23-Jul-1999 (PG-13)
UK
N/A
Australia
23-Sep-1999 (MA)
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