THE HAUNTING
For this newfangled adaptation of the
1959 Shirley Jackson ghost story The Haunting of Hill House
(previously filmed in 1963 by Robert Wise), director Jan De
Bont (Speed, Twister) spent his estimated $70 million
budget on everything, from Oscar-winning production designer Eugenio
Zanetti's lavish sets for the Victorian-era Hill House mansion
to elaborate visual effects produced by three different effects
houses. All that De Bont forgot to do was make The Haunting
scary. This is a film where the scariest moment is Bruce Dern's
two-minute bit of unbearable overacting as a brooding Hill House
caretaker. (Is Dern doomed to playing wild-eyed psychos all his
life?)
In De Bont's Haunting, psychologist
David Marrow (Liam Neeson) uses the notorious mansion, built in
the 1860s by a mysterious textile baron, to conduct what appears
to be a sleep disorder study. His three test subjects are reclusive
Nell (Lili Taylor), outgoing bisexual artist Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones)
and cynical smart-aleck Luke (Owen Wilson, the Bottle Rocket
and Rushmore
screenwriter). But when the ghost
of the murderous textile mill owner makes his presence known and
attacks the guests, a shocked Dr. Marrow prematurely ends the
insomnia study and reveals to his subjects that he was really
analyzing fear. Theo and Luke react with typical horror-movie
idiot's surprise (did they really expect their insomnia to be
cured in what Luke refers to as "the Addams Family mansion"?)
in scenes as atrociously acted as Dern's cameo, while an increasingly
hysterical Nell is too preoccupied with unraveling the mansion's
secrets and communicating with the ghosts of the evil textile
baron's murder victims.
Visual effects supervisor Phil Tippett,
the mastermind behind the Jurassic Park dinos and the Dragonslayer dragon, hits a low point with
The Haunting, with second-rate CGI ghosts as tacky and
clunky as the effects in awful Stephen King ABC miniseries like
The Langoliers. (Oh, how I sometimes long for the pre-digital
days of The Shining and Poltergeist.) The
cartoonish-looking computer effects look like they were made on
the budget of The Blair Witch Project, which relies on
psychological scares instead of an overabundance of effects (although its characters are
as bright as the half-wits in The Haunting). Tippett isn't
the only one slumming here; Neeson looks embarrassed playing the
most inept psychologist in film history. And when will Hollywood
filmmakers quit casting Zeta-Jones as Americans and let her speak
in her natural — and sexy — Welsh accent? Only the wistful
Taylor, perfectly cast as the film's haunted heroine, emerges
unscathed, but she should have known better than to involve herself
in this overproduced, suspenseless fiasco, an ideal cure for insomnia.
© 1999 Jim Aquino