About as Haunting as a sock filled with ice cream (The Haunting (DVD))

Member Name: Ooze

Product:	The Haunting (DVD)
Date:	12/07/00 (69 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Erm Erm, it's better than sitting at home clipping toe nails

Disadvantages: Same old stuff

Well in my book there are two types of horror film. The psychological horror film, like Hitchcock, where tensions are created and a real sense of horror stays with you for days after the film. Unfortunately this film strays into the second category. It is a horror film not based on plot, not based on tensions, but purely based on effects and the hopes of a cheap fright. Did that make any sense to anyone other than me?

The film wasn’t likely to live up to my expectations, as I have read the book and that was fab and I’ve seen the first film, I think that was made in the late 40’s – 50’s. Either way they both created a superb fear in me. The indulged deeply into the plot and the psychology was there to make me wonder, even the film managed to do this with some splendid acting and good direction, however the re-make of the Haunting is really not very good, although maybe not quite as bad as some have made it out to be.

I suppose it did have some novelty value, and I did find myself jumping, although at bits that weren’t meant to be scary, like a phone ringing lol. And the direction team obviously had wanted to convey the plot to be involved and understandable, because for great periods of the film the story of how the children’s sprits haven’t been able to leave the house because they had been murdered by this bloke, whatever. They didn’t quite get it working though.

I’m sure you all know the basic plot, and the star – Catherine Zeta Jones, but I’ll give you a quick reminder. The basic plot is one that has been seen before but is still conveyed as fairly original. Basically a professor (Liam Neeson) hires unstable people to stay in a big old house and create scare stories in order to study fear etc. however there is one small drawback the place is actually haunted, indeed one of the subjects had been summoned ‘supernaturally’ as she was the great great
grandmother of the sprits of the dead children or something. I must say that even the acting of Catherine is a little lack lustre and Liam Neeson is so shallow.

Also the whole film is just too predictable. One of the subjects gets killed because something swings down and takes his head off. However earlier in the film we’d seen this thing in action and it was there for all to see that this would happen.

Probably the best part of the film are the special effects. It’s obviously had a big budget, but they just don’t work. For one they don’t fit in with the whole psychology of the situation and two they are simply too far fetched. The bloke at the end in the whirling cloud, is an impressive feat but it doesn’t work, and I’m struggling to explain why.

I think the film was better at the cinema but not by much, I think this is probably one to miss.

Summary: