Overall Rating
 Awesome: 17.65%
Worth A Look: 23.53%
Average: 20.26%
Pretty Bad: 26.14%
Total Crap: 12.42%
7 reviews, 111 user ratings
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| House on Haunted Hill (1999) |
by Andrew Howe
"Mindless, but not entirely stupid."
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From the Collins English Dictionary definition of pariah: “A person who enjoys a film which has every other right-thinking person reaching for the ‘terminate with extreme prejudice’ button on their remote control”.From the Collins English Dictionary definition of sucker for punishment: “Someone who makes these feelings public”.
I say this without qualification – House on Haunted Hill is not a bad film. It’s not going to set the world on fire, it’s not going to shoot into anybody’s top 100 with a bullet, but when it comes to mindless entertainment it’s up there with the best.
Here’s the drill: six strangers front up to an abandoned asylum, lured by the promise that anyone who makes it through the night will receive a cool million bucks, courtesy of their smug and self-assured host (Geoffrey Rush). Lots of people die. Roll credits.
Is the plot ridiculous? Certainly, but no more so than the latest big-budget action flick. The script features enough twists that you’re never entirely sure where you stand, overlaying a potentially straightforward tale of supernatural dismemberment with a litany of deception. It’s no Sleuth, but it’s a pleasant surprise to realise that, just when you think you’ve got it all worked out, there’s another curve ball waiting in the wings.
Are the characters graduates from central casting? Certainly, but the actors manage to invest these sketchy creations with a little more life than a schlockfest generally requires. If you warmed to Rush in Mystery Men you’ll love him here – he seems to have decided that, if he’s going to take parts in movies which won’t be earning him any Academy Award nominations, he’s damn well going to earn his paycheque. His dry, unflappable style is perfectly suited to the role, and his tongue-in-cheek delivery invites the viewer to enjoy the proceedings as much as he does.
The remaining actors range from the mildly memorable to the borderline serviceable, but nobody could be accused of phoning in their performance (except for Famke Jannsen, who looks like she wishes she was somewhere else). Ali Larter and Taye Diggs are especially noteworthy, for they provide the kind of likeable performances that are essential to the success of any film which invites the viewer to stake a claim in the survival of the protagonists.
However, what really sets this film apart is the atmosphere. The opening sequence is truly disturbing, and from that moment on the script dedicates itself to unsettling the viewer by playing on our primal fear of winding up in a snake-pit asylum. There’s massive metal shutters slamming home, glimpses of murderous doctors wielding razor-sharp implements, gut-churning dream sequences on the road to madness, the dimming of the lights as the electroshock switch is thrown, doorways leading to places no sane person would dare to tread, cacophonous wailing in the distance – if you suspend your disbelief and allow it to insinuate itself into your subconscious you’ll be having nightmares for a week (and that, after all, is the aim of any good horror flick).
Unfortunately, the film takes a turn for the worse in the final third, jettisoning its innovations in favour of a predictable finale. Up to that moment the scriptwriter avoids the most unforgivable cliches of the genre - the characters, by and large, behave in a rational manner (as opposed to, say, deciding to check out those strange noises by yourself), and the “cheap shock” technique is used sparingly and effectively. However, the convoluted plot finally collapses under its own weight, leaving our heroes to face a creature which looks like it was left over from the House films (not to mention the final scene, in which the survivors act like they’ve just returned from a picnic in the sun, enjoying a hearty laugh at the expense of their murdered comrades).This is a major disappointment, for if the scriptwriters had possessed the guts to stick to their guns the film could have been something for horror fans to talk about for years to come. As it stands, however, it is still worthy of our attention, and it’s certainly a cut above the current crop of exploitative slasher flicks. My advice is to leave that remote alone, and let the film work itself into the darkest reaches of your subconscious - it won’t exercise your grey matter, but it may well give your inner child pause for thought.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1781&reviewer=193
originally posted: 09/16/01 11:48:41
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USA
29-Oct-1999 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
10-Feb-2000
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