Product: The Haunting [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 1.0
Disgrace
Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House is the greatest haunted house story ever written, and the 1963 film version is one of the finer examples of the horror genre ever committed to film, but this illegitimate 1999 re-make is a disgrace to the memory of the author, an inferior descendant of the original movie, and an all-around bad (bad bad bad!) motion picture. Alternating between groaningly, achingly terrible and downright silly, 1999's The Haunting loses its threadbare plot in a special effects quagmire, obliterates any of the greatness it could easily have inherited from this predecessors, fails to make use of the magnificent understated creepiness of the novel, and squanders a talented cast. Not only is it offensive to witness what was done with Shirley Jackson's work, this is just a rotten waste of time to see.