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description: |
Suffering from the extreme bad luck of being released at the same time as the low-budget
f1i The Blair Witch Project
f0i0 , this adaptation of
f1i The Haunting of Hill House
f0i0 attempts to update Shirley Jackson's psychologically terrifying ghost story to the era of big-budget, computerized special effects. Does it work? Well, let's just say that showing isn't exactly the same as telling. A prime example of bloated studio filmmaking,
f1i The Haunting
f0i0 telegraphs all its frights so blatantly that it forsakes any of Jackson's subtle horrors for the remedial scares of a clunky carnival ride. The story remains basically the same, with four people called to an old mansion for experiments in the supernatural, but instead of getting inside the heads of its main characters (as the 1963 adaptation by Robert Wise did so well), Jan DeBont's film deserts character development for the huge, glorious set design provided by Eugenio Zanetti (
f1i Restoration
f0i0 ). Thus, instead of a well-drawn story you get... a well-drawn house, one that four very talented and underutilized actors--Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Liam Neeson, and Owen Wilson--wander around in endlessly (as Zeta-Jones puts it, the house is "sort of Charles Foster Kane meets the Munsters"). Taylor, as the hypersensitive Nell, is the unknowing lynchpin in the battle between good and bad ghosts and gets saddled with most of the expository dialogue of the mansion's gothic backstory. Zeta-Jones (showing some spark) and Neeson (showing none) are sadly reduced to providing reactionary shots of the film's disastrous climax, which mixes hapless new-age affirmations with computer-generated effects of ghosts and exploding windows, walls, doors, etc. For this haunted-house story, take a quick tour of the breathtaking rooms, but definitely
f1i don't
f0i0 stay the night.
f1i --Mark Englehart
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| uuid: |
A843D406-A1E1-11D9-BBB6-000D936C95F6" |
| upc: |
667068482027 |
| title: |
The Haunting |
| theatricalDate: |
31-03-1999 |
| stars: |
Lili Taylor
Liam Neeson
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Owen Wilson |
| purchase date: |
31-03-2005 |
| publisher: |
Universal Studios |
| published: |
23-11-1999 |
| price: |
$12.99 |
| net Rating: |
2.79 |
| MPAA Rating: |
PG-13 |
| last lookup time: |
133965468.9439772 |
| genre: |
Horror |
| edition: |
DVD |
| director: |
Jan de Bont |
| created: |
133965454.687142 |
| aspect: |
Color
Closed-captioned
Widescreen
Dolby |
| asin: |
0783237413
|
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