The Haunting Details

Classic haunted house...

Contemporary movie makers could learn a lot from Robert Wises', The Haunting. Forget the recent remake with Leeson/Zeta Jones as this creeps the crap right out of it! Black and white, kind of Gothic, but what did it for me were the camera angles, use of space and perspective, and the power of suggestion. Its dark: its brooding, its ALIVE! muuahhahahah!

[Highly rated reviewer]

Too much melodrama, not enough haunting

Not the classic I was led to believe, The Haunting, Robert Wise's 1963 adaptation of the novel “The House on Haunted Hill” is a slightly overwrought melodrama which centre’s as much on the demons in our minds as well as any supernatural manifestations. Lead characters Eleanor’s internal dialogue show us she’s a person at war with her herself before she even reaches the impressively oppressive house. If we are in any doubt her diva'ish behaviour confirms it.

Too much of this movie is wasted on her tantrums and not enough on the actual haunting itself which when it does manifest itself is beautifully handled, utilising sound and shadow to powerfully plant the visage of true evil in our midst. Eleanor is a woman so desperate to be wanted by someone she imagines the entity has focused on her.

There is an interesting sub-text in the script about the supernatural actually being a preternatural phenomenon and that one day science will explain it all which is something I agree with and could have been developed further in the film. Rather this than more extravagant hand wringing.

The Haunting is impressively directed and the performances are fine but unlike modern Japanese ghost films it lacks atmosphere but it does have one very salient moment when a character points outs that newspapers have a ghost or celebrity story at least once a week. Now its celebrity’s everyday and ghosts?…Well they don’t exist. ……Do they?