The Haunting (1963)
The Haunting is an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, a psychological horror story about four people trapped in a Gothic mansion that is infested with ghosts. The film follows the novel fairly closely, making things a bit more explicit and spectacular.
It’s a very effective haunted house movie, one that’s often compared to William Castle’s 1959 homage to Jackson’s story, House on Haunted Hill. But where Castle was going for clear spook-a-blast spectacle, The Haunting is aiming more for something akin to what Stanley Kubrick would later do with The Shining. A story about ghosts that may just be about mental illness even if the ghost aspect is fairly explicit.
56 years later the movie hasn’t lost a step and it’s one of those classic horror films that really earns its reputation.
The Haunting (1999)
The Haunting is the third film of cinematographer turned director Jan de Bont and features a strong quartet of actors in Lilli Taylor, LIam Neeson, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Owen Wilson. Where the original film simple expanded on the subtext of the original, this one goes all-in on spooky spectacle.
This Hill House is filled with animated statues, faces in curtains and sheets, full-on spectral attacks. It’s less The Haunting of Hill House and more akin to something like Richard Matheson’s sort-of-tribute novel Hell House.
Is it a good remake?
It’s not, both the book and the original movie are very much about the psychology of the four people in Hill House, and that’s just not what the remake is about. This movie was always hated by devotees of the original but with the recent miniseries having really nailed down the spirit, if not the story, of the novel, this movie has become the ugly stepchild adaptation of the property.
I’ll get to why this being a bad remake isn’t a big deal in the next session, but in answering this question I will say firmly that no, this is not a good remake.
Does it stand on its own?
YES! I have nothing but love for Thir13en Ghosts and House on Haunted Hill, two adaptations of classic (admittedly less good) ghost stories of the era that all came out at about the same time. But those two movies have their defenders and this one does not and it’s a goddamn crime.
The movie fails entirely to capture the essence of Shirley Jackson’s novel or of the original film adaptation but that’s a feature, not a bug. Jan de Bont has chosen to make The Haunting the biggest most ambitious haunted house movie of all time and he does it on a scale that is frankly absurd. Every film version of Hill House is absurd but de Bont’s Hill House is like some fairy tale dream fortress built on massive sets. The film makes a lot of use of some pretty clever and ambitious CG effects that do not look real but have a strangely comforting texture about them like plastic army men or something that’s weirdly aesthetically pleasing.
Yes, Owen Wilson is annoying, but that’s the character he’s playing, he was annoying in the original too. Yes he gets his head bitten off by a comically oversized chimney flue inexplicably shaped like a lion’s head, that’s really dumb, but it’s a very small moment in a movie filled with very big ones.
This movie’s got Bruce Dern and professional bitter old movie crone Marian Seldes as the caretakers The Dudleys. It’s got atmospheric noises, palatial sets, an ambitiously over-the-top but not campy third act, and some great performances by everyone in its cast. Jan de Bont is the butt of every joke about bad 90s film-making but he was firing on all cylinders in this movie. It’s like the Crimson Peak of 1999 and I feel like nobody really appreciates this movie. Watch it! Watch it now. Thir13en Ghosts and the House on Haunted Hill remake are great, they’re considerably stupider and less meticulously made than this movie. Those movies are creepy and fun, this one is just a solid spooky atmospheric movie.
Watch, Toss, or Buy?
Buy this, the fact that it’s not on Blu-ray is a crime.