Product: The Haunting [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 2.0
Ho-Hum
On paper, 'The Haunting' promises to deliver all sorts of traditional horror-flick chills and thrills, and with such a stellar cast, the movie certainly looks like it's going to deliver. Sadly, in reality, this is not the case, and 'The Haunting' rapidly descends into a hodgepodge of stilted momentum and out-of-place histrionics.Dr. David Marrow (Liam Neeson, selling his considerable talent out for a dollar) has assembled a group of sleep-deprived people in a supposedly haunted house to conduct an experiment in the power of suggestion. Of this group, Nell Vance (Lili Taylor) is plagued by sinister forces throughout her stay, and it's up to Dr. Marrow and his other patients, boho-chic Theo (Catherine Z-J) and n'er-do-well playboy Luke (Owen Wilson), to save Nell and themselves from the malevolent spectres haunting the house.None of the cast could be blamed for not doing their level best with a lousy, awkward script. Neeson and Taylor are two of the finest actors working today, and even their portrayals of their own characters come off as insincere and mawkish. Zeta-Jones, an actress of considerable talent, does slightly better in the role of the promiscuous and mysterious Theo, but that's due mainly to the fact that she physically looks the part. The talents of Owen Wilson, too, are lost in a two-dimensional character, lacking both development and sympathy.The locations, you can tell, were intended to be sweeping and absorbing, and a lot of design and research has clearly gone into making the House the real star of the show. Shame, then, that it looks like some sort of anodyne Disney-Fun thrill house, instead of a brooding mansion harbouring dark secrets. The carved faces of the children look like something out of the Addams Family Household, and the legion rooms and chambers are as unbelievable in number as they are overstated in design. Coupled with some laughable special effects (doors and porticoes coming together to make faces, the particularly risible end sequence) the House is merely the lewd, bawdy, amateurish backdrop against which this sad little tale is played out.Direction? Not really. Jan De Bont is responsible for some of the most directorially-accomplished thrillers of our time (Speed, Twister, What Lies Beneath) but has apparently left his thinking cap at home for this one.And to finish, for those of you who may have read the book first, this film lacks any of the subtle psychology or endearing character traits of Shirley Jackson's classic novel noir. It even goes so far as to change the ending from a melancholy and desolate event to a cheap, tawdry Hollywood-Esque 'Big Bang', and by the movie's end, we're left wondering exactly what has happened and why we wasted so much time watching 'The Haunting' at all.A no-brainer of extreme proportions, there are far better examples of this sort of thing available.