The Haunting
Oh boy. I think, in 1999, Jan de Bont’s “The Haunting” was probably my pick for the most disappointing film of the year (it was either that or “Wild Wild West”). Rewatching it two decades later, I can’t even imagine a reason why I thought it was “ok,” even. Looking back on that summer now, it’s really not very good when it comes to the movies that were the most anticipated, or biggest hits, when it comes to big action tent poles. And “The Haunting,” even if it’s nominally a horror film, fits in to that category, because that’s where de Bont came from. It’s one of the worst of the bunch.
The film is an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s famous horror novel, which had also been adapted by Robert Wise for his terrific 1963 film, “The Haunting,” but any emotional weight that might have been a part of the screenplay credited to David Self here is buried in production design and cheap CGI scares as a doctor (Liam Neeson) gets three people (Owen Wilson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Lily Taylor) together for a sleep study in a haunted house. There’s a creepy groundskeeper (Bruce Dern) and a mysterious housekeeper (Marian Seldes) whom lock the gate up at night, and there were originally two other people (Neeson’s research assistants, played by Alix Koromzay and Todd Field), but after a freak accident the first night, they leave, never to return. Neeson’s Dr. Morrow tells them the tale of the man who used to live here, and then the haunting begins.
A bit about Lily Taylor in this film. Her character is in the middle of a bitter fight with her sister (Virginia Madsen) and brother-in-law (Tom Irwin) over the estate of their mother, whom has just passed away after Nell, Taylor’s character, had taken care of her for 11 years. For her, this study seems to be coming at an opportune time- she has never really had anything exciting in her life, and she hits it off with Zeta-Jones’s Theo well (you feel like the script may want to play them as a potential romantic couple, but that doesn’t read at all in the finished product). She finds herself particularly susceptible to the mysteries of the house, though, for reasons the film tries to make seem important by the end. Taylor is really good in this role, but the movie does not give her any room to build a character, or really play off of the other actors (especially Zeta-Jones) in a way that is interesting. I’m not sure if it’s because of the script, or that de Bont was more interested in the technical parts of the film, but it’s a big waste that her role here wasn’t more in the conversation with other interesting horror performances that year.
“The Haunting” was a more miserable rewatch than I expected. Even the detailed production design does not really hold up to scrutiny, especially when most of the “scares” in the film rely so heavily on CGI and not practical effects. And de Bont’s direction is lifeless, and he doesn’t even get the best out of composer Jerry Goldsmith, who knows how to score a haunted house movie- he did it for Steven Spielberg (an uncredited executive producer on this, after he saw the end result) with “Poltergeist.” A few months ago, I rewatched “Speed,” and that blast of pure action holds together beautifully. How did the same director lose his grip on his craft in five years?
