Product: The Haunting [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 1.0
horrendous remake
Recently, Entertainment Weekly published a list of the "25 Scariest Movies of All Time", compiled by the employees of the magazine. Clustered atop the list were the usual horror film suspects, fine films all: "The Exorcist", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Alien", "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Halloween". Perhaps predictably, absent from the Top 25 were the horror films of yesteryear, particularly four films from what I consider to be the "Golden Age" of horror. For in an amazing four year span, 1960-1963, a quartet of films, each released in a different year, emerged to lift the genre to heights it has not been able to reach again. In 1960 came the great British sci-fi thriller, "Village of the Damned"; in 1961, there was Jack Clayton's brilliant ghost story, "The Innocents"; then, in 1962 came the piece de resistance, what, for me, is the greatest horror film of all time, Herk Harvey's low budget masterpiece of eeriness, "Carnival of Souls"; finally, in 1963, Robert Wise directed the classic haunted house spectacular, "The Haunting", based on Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House". Each of these films share, in addition to their effective use of black-and-white photography and haunting musical scores, an appreciation of the power of suggestion, their realization that true terror lies in the imagination and that a creepy mood counts for more than inane gruesomeness and heavy handed special effects that just end up detracting from the horror. (I would include "Night of the Living Dead" on my list except that it was released in 1968).Now, with the new version of "The Haunting", each of these films has been subjected to the indignity of a modern day remake. Jan De Bont's version is a travesty on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin, but each of its many failures stems from a basic problem of modern commercial moviemaking: wretched excess. The first element that makes it inferior to the original is one that probably can't be avoided in this day and age; the simple fact that black-and-white is far more effective a medium in establishing the kind of eerie atmosphere necessary for this type of tale. In color, the picture is simply too clean and bright and one loses the sense of danger hidden in the shadowy corridors and corners of the house. And the house itself creates a problem. For although the art direction is a true miracle of design and decor, it actually detracts from the suspenseful ambience the film so desperately wants to achieve. Even Hill House has to be realized on a scale of some believability. In the original film, the rooms looked as if someone might one day have actually lived in them. Here, the setting is so preposterously ornate that the house looks more like a museum or grand fun house than a center of ghostly activity.The film fails far more dismally on the level of its screenplay. In the original story and film, the parallels between past and present that connected Eleanor, the protagonist, to Hill House were worked out with such a fine logic that they helped hold the plot together. For instance, an earlier inhabitant of the house was a bed-ridden invalid who had to be looked after just as Eleanor had looked after her ailing mother. Also, the car crash that kills Eleanor in the original is presage by a carriage accident which kills one of the earlier inhabitants and which begins the curse that befalls this house that, as the originals claim, was "born bad". In the remake, the house has no logical reason for choosing Eleanor so the plotting degenerates into arbitrary silliness. Indeed, part of the fun of the original was the atmosphere of anticipation that came from knowing this house had a reputation for evil and the slowly dawning realization that it was searching for a new victim. In the new film, this is never established and, in fact, the characters aren't gathered to hunt for ghosts at all, but have been lulled there by a researcher, ostensibly to help them cope with their insomnia, but actually to function as guinea pigs in a study of the effects of fear on the personality. Yet, this is inexplicable because the doctor has nothing to do with the ghostly phenomena and, in fact, doesn't believe in its existence, so, by what method was this fear to be manifested? This is typical of the illogic that permeates the film. And, surprisingly, in these more permissive times, all the sexual tension between the doctor and Eleanor is completely eliminated from this version.The ultimate indignity comes in the film's appalling final half hour when any attempt to replicate the subtlety of the original film is abandoned in favor of overblown special effects and lines like "Hugh Crane, I'm not afraid of you!". By this time, the audience has erupted into bursts of incredulous laughter and Hollywood has succeeded in trashing yet another of its classic films.