The Haunting (1999)

Starring - Liam Neeson; Catherine Zeta-Jones; Owen Wilson; Lili Taylor & Bruce Dern Director - Jan de Bont MPAA - Rated PG-13 for intense horror sequences. When The Haunting arrived in theaters, all I kept hearing about was the overdone special effects and the fact that very often the unseen bumps in the night in a horror film are far scarier than those that you can put a face to courtesy of special effects. While I agree that this remake of The Haunting goes a bit overboard in the visual effects department, I don't think that they are completely to blame for this movie's failure. It appears that some people have failed to take into account that the original Haunting had the "unseen" terrors, and it was about as scary as a dust bunny. So special effects or not, if the story isn't the least bit scary, you aren't going to end up with a very frightening movie. The thing that interested me most about this movie was the caretaker of this building played by Bruce Dern. Dern is always great, and even though he may have had only about 3 minutes of screen time he was still the most interesting element of the movie. As I sat through the seemingly endless, albeit fairly impressive, special effects, I kept wishing that this movie was about Dern's caretaker and not the one dimensional characters that populated the cast. Never a good sign when a bit player is the best part of the movie. Liam Neeson plays a scientist who is conducting experiments on fear. He decides the best way to get results is to trick a group of fairly unstable individuals to spend a few days in a haunted mansion. He tricks them into participating by letting on that he is conducting an experiment on insomnia. And he also fails to mention that the mansion has a reputation for strange goings-on. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lili Taylor and Owen Wilson play his subjects. Like the original, Taylor's character is the star of the movie. But since she doesn't quite have the marquee power of Liam Neeson and Ms. Zeta-Jones, their parts did seem to be a big larger than in the original. And let's face it, probably half the people who see this movie will do so because of Zeta-Jones. I'll admit that I would have never seen this thing if she weren't in it. But the real stars here are the special effects combined with the fairly overdone sets. They take over the movie as the supernatural elements of the house start to interact with our hapless insomnia patients. There really isn't much of a story here. Just endless setups so director Jan de Bont can showcase all the nifty special effects that he got to play with. And the special effects are great. In many cases they are as good as you are likely to see anywhere. In other cases they are overdone and obviously thrown in just for the sake of hitting the "cool shots" quota. At no point in the movie do any of these things ever come close to being scary -- funny, maybe; but not scary. Then we have the set. When I first saw the house, I was very impressed with the very cool gothic look about it. But it only took a short tour by the characters around the place to see that the set designers obviously had as much money to burn as the visual effects people did, and decided to take the idiotically overdone route. This included a flooded hallway with books as stepping stones and a mirrored circular room that revolves. What part did these rooms play in the story? Absolutely none, they were just there to take our minds off the fact that there was neither a descent story nor a single scare in the entire movie. Then we have the actors. Lili Taylor has never been one of my favorites. And when the fact that her character is mousy and pathetic is factored in, she comes in around the average or slightly below mark. I have no idea why Liam Neeson took this role. He basically reminded me of the ringmaster at an out of control circus. His character was in charge of this farce but it quickly got away from him. I have no doubt that Liam will want to lock all prints of this movie in a very secure vault along with all copies of Darkman. Zeta-Jones was cast because she is too hot for words. The fact that her character is bi-sexual is just icing on the cake. All Catherine has to do in this movie is look good. Fortunately that is something she does very well. While she does have a fairly good size part, it is obvious that her only purpose in the movie was as eye-candy. It's too bad someone of her talents wasted them here. Any random supermodel pulled out of a fashion show could have easily filled her role. The Haunting is the antithesis of another of 1999's horror movies, The Blair Witch Project. The Haunting had a seemingly limitless effects budget, while Blair Witch relies on piles of rocks for its scares. Both prove quite nicely that special effects are irrelevant to a horror film. If the story sucks, it's all downhill from there. My advice? If you are looking for special effects, go rent Star Wars. If it is scares you want, rent Halloween. Either way, it's probably in your best interests to skip The Haunting. 4/10 Reviewed December 25, 1999 by Joe Chamberlain