Product: The Haunting [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 1.0
Yikes, Scoob! Gh - gh - gh - ghosts!!!
An audience can forgive anything - except having its intelligence insulted, and this movie does that in spades.Director Jan de Bont bounced straight off of one of the worst cinematic bombs in living memory - Speed 2 - to assault the sensibilities of a paying public with the most over-the-top and unbelievably dumb ghost story ever committed to film (until Stephen King's Rose Red).The film has two things to its credit: great cinematography, and a fabulous house.Unfortunately, past those two things, everything else is just awful. The all-star cast is completely wasted, except for Lili Taylor, who practically does a one-woman show - co-starring more with the house and special effects than with her flesh-and-blood co-stars - though that is through no fault of her own. The script is shallow and trite, and doesn't allow any of the other characters to be more than the most meagre set-dressing. The story is childishly simplistic, and the almost non-stop computer-generated rollercoaster "horror" ride that comprises the last half hour wouldn't scare Scooby Doo in Disneyland. The concluding line - "It's all about the family!" - is genuinely one of the worst unintended howlers in cinema history.Even without Shirley Jackson's novel or the original 1963 Robert Wise classic to compare it to, this version of The Haunting is just embarrassing. Save your money, and read Jackson's novel or watch Wise's film, instead.