DIRECTED BY:
Jan de BontWRITTEN BY:
David Self
BASED ON THE NOVEL:
The Haunting of
Hill House
by Shirley Jackon (I)
CAST:
Liam Neeson
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Owen Wilson
Lili Taylor
LINKS:
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DreamWorks
SKG, unfortunately, has done it again. They have sacrificed story
coherence for a gorgeous spectacle that fails to bring us to any realization of what it is
we were in fact to be afraid of. Horror derives its power from a monster or a world that
represents something we are to fear. In a haunted house story, the horror comes through a
ghost that represents something we have repressed in our personal lives, or something that
has been passed down from our ancestry.
In The Haunting, a
small group is brought to Hill House for an insomnia study conducted by a research
psychologist. His actual intention, however, is to study fear. The experiment turns from
suggestion of fear to real fear as the mystery of despicable acts of murder and child
abuse is uncovered. While this is happening, the house comes alive in frightening and
unexpected ways that cause a jump or two in the audience.
The house itself is one of the most
beautifully lush visual interiors ever filmed for a horror movie. The sounds, the
discovery of bones, and the way some of the characters are dispatched is truly spine
tingling.
Symptomatic of the story problems, the
ending gives us a scene of visual wizardry that leaves us cold, not with fright, but with
a kind of "So, what was that all about?" feeling.
SPOILER
The action development gives no hint of
what makes Eleanor (Lili Taylor),
the main female character, more
courageous, i.e. nothing except the again-and-again repeated "The children need
me". She is in more of a trance than a transition. In addition, we are given no
explanation for her death at the end. It is poetic and beautiful that the children’s
and the Eleanor's soul ascend to heaven, and the evil ghost is taken to hell, but this is
a wimpy conclusion for a repressed woman who fights to overpower her inner demons. Had we
seen her soul leave her body in the final surrender to the oppressive world and then tear
away and come back, and lead her onward, maybe with her lovely friend Theo (Catherine
Zeta-Jones), to claim her life and power, that would have been a more satisfying ending.
Or if, just when she claimed victory over the evil ghost, he plunged into her body, and
her innocent, helpless face slowly turned into an expression of terror and menace, then we
might have left the theater scared.
The movie perhaps aimed to suggest the
tangibility of the purgatory on earth where we are held back by unseen forces.
Unfortunately, The Haunting doesn’t let us experience anything equally
tangible that will make the shackles of our reality any clearer. We left with no greater
insight either into the nature of our demons or into the qualities we need to overcome
them.
We have much higher hopes for the
DreamWorks team to achieve the kind of greatness their collective talent promises.
We welcome your comments!
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