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| Directed by William Malone; Starring Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan |
Earlier this year I actually allowed myself to look forward to some horror films. I’m usually the first person to discard a horror film, but this year I found myself awaiting three. One was a purely original one that I turned out recommending (The Blair Witch Project), another was moved to February of next year (Scream 3). The other film was The Haunting. The trailer for the film did so much to get me hyped that my normally marginal C rating for it served as a bit of disappointment for me. It was just that the film had so much going for it: a pretty good cast, a beautiful art direction, and an original horror classic as a basis (it was a remake of Robert Wise’s The Haunting from 1963). The film made me so unhappy that even when I walked into The Blair Witch Project, I was a little fearful of what might occur (despite a raving review from Roger Ebert). That cynicism lasted as I walked into The Haunting of Hill House. The adequate trailer for the film let me know that it had a pretty good cast, a beautiful art direction, big special effects, and an original horror classic as a basis (remake of William Castle’s The Haunting of Hill House from 1958). I was even more disappointed with Hill House, and I was not even expecting much out of it!
The film tells of what happens when five strangers are brought together as a trick that a millionaire plays on his unloving wife. Steven Price (Rush) hates his wife Evelyn so much that he comes up with a plan that will ruin her birthday party in a large building that he has rented. When those that she wants at the party are thrown out by Steven for a list that he thinks might madden her, a unusual force again changes this list, bringing the five diverse characters together. The first is a television producer (Wilson) with an indifferent feeling that tells you her future is not too bright; a football player that has been thrown off the league (Diggs); a secretary masquerading as her boss (Larter); a doctor seems the most in peace with everything that has to do with the evening (Gallagher); and the man that owns the place and is in deepest fear of what the building might do to him (Kattan). It seems that there is a back story to the place that involves murder, suicide, and unsettled souls. With the visitors in the ex-asylum, those that live in the walls take it upon themselves to overcome them.
I knew there was something wrong with the film when it shows a circa 1940 newsreel with violence, gore, and nudity. The inconsistencies do not end there with the film’s awful screenplay. I’d dare say that this is one of the worst written films this year. The direction and special effects are nothing to write home about and the actors are almost all calling in their performances. To be fair there was one thing that I did like about the film: Kattan. His periodical comic relief actually allowed to get some pleasure, no matter how little, out of this film.
If it was not for Kattan, The House on Haunted Hill might have been vying for the Ed Wood Humanitarian Award at the end of the year (part of the Golden Brandos).
