house on haunted hill ( 1999 ) starring taye diggs , geoffrey rush , ali larter , famke janssen , peter gallagher , bridgette wilson , max perlich , lisa loeb , james marsters , and chris kattan .
directed by william malone , written by dick beebe , " house on haunted hill " initializes itself to the audience with a scene involving zombie - like mental patients attacking and murdering doctors in the goriest ways possible .
one doctor is killed instantly after having a pencil rammed completely through his neck .
a nurse has her head forced into a barrel of water .
these mobs of zombies presented are like those in previous b - horror flicks , with grunting noises and cadaverous movements . except this time , at the end of the millenium , the film is given the power to show exactly how horrific these creatures can be .
in past horror films , the actual murder scenes are left out or not shown forcing the viewer to assume their own nasty bloody deaths for the hapless victims .
" house on haunted hill " does n't want their audience to have an imagination , everything is provided for them to watch and squirm , not think .
this nonsense violence thrown out of nowhere is unfortunately the most refreshing part about this film .
" house on haunted hill " , which is based on the 1958 film of the same title , introduces a handful of characters as quickly as it can , following the opening blood fest .
the film has no intention of providing character development or a laudable plot .
the aim here is to scare the audience with chilling , unexpected shots of blood , guts , and mayhem . however ,
the film is neither scary nor unpredictable .
the plot involves five people who are dared to spend the night in a haunted house for one million dollars by an amusement park owner ( geoffrey rush ) .
each character is a failure in the external world and acknowledges that they would do anything for that money .
since the characters are immediately generalized as either greedy or caring , the expectations of who will survive or not is killed five minutes after you meet them .
the problem is that every character is not likable .
the two who come closest to being civilized are a womanizer ( taye diggs - who should be doing films a lot better than this with all of his talent ) and a businesswoman who accepts being womanized ( ali larter ) .
the characters presented are so annoying and pathetic , that it is hard to cheer for them or scream them .
the worst character in this film , or maybe in any film released this year , is chris kattan 's watson pritchett .
he spends the whole film whining about the spooky house in a tone so irritating and inappropriate , that he unintentionally begins to seem more evil than the house itself . waiting for pritchett to die , was a strenuously difficult act to sit through .
the most humorous actor of the bunch is geoffrey rush playing steven price ( an homage to victor price who starred in the original ) .
playing the rich man who supposedly organized the party , he plays the role perfectly in a twisted way where it is obvious that he is up to something just by the expressions on his face .
however , rush is pretty much wasted in a confusing subplot involving a hateful marriage with evelyn price , played by famke janssen .
the main problem is that " house on haunted hill " is not scary . to top off that huge disappointment , every actor was wasted and the script was completely ludicrous .
if the annoying characters and hilariously bad dialogue were intentionally underdeveloped ( similar to " deep blue sea " ) , the goal for creating a creepy , suspenseful action film was completely missed .
pretty much wasted in a confusing subplot so annoying and pathetic this nonsense violence thrown out of nowhere the problem is that every character is not likable the worst character in this film so irritating and inappropriate to top off that huge disappointment , every actor was wasted and the script was completely ludicrous annoying characters and hilariously bad dialogue the film is neither scary nor unpredictable