I think I now know why Liam Neeson said he was finished making films and would instead concentrate on stage acting. After watching The Haunting, a horror film remake of the 1963 classic, I don't blame him. While the set is spectacular and the movie's start is promising, it soon gets bogged down in bogus special effects and a boring plot. Neeson, and the rest of the cast, gets upstaged by a house.
Neeson plays psychologist David Marrow who invites three insomniacs to volunteer for a study on sleep disorders. Unbeknownst to them, it's really a study on the basis of group fear and hysteria. "You don't tell the rats they're actually in a maze," is Marrow's justification for the deception. A sad and lonely Eleanor (Lili Taylor) is making her own way after a lifetime of tending to her recently deceased invalid mother; Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is a big city bisexual with plenty of moxy; while Luke (Owen Wilson, looking and sounding like a young Dennis Hopper) is there for comic relief. The three are the case studies in the Hill House Project -- although when Dr. Marrow utters the name, it sounds eerily like Hell House. And a hell house it is.
As the advertising for this movie tells us, some houses are born bad. Unfortunately, so are some movies. This one starts with potential, as we get to know the characters and the beautiful mansion they'll be locked in overnight, a century-old castle with addition after addition added to it. The building is truly a marvel. But it's almost as if all the filmmakers' attention was devoted to the set and none to the plot or any other aspect of the film. The scariest stories are psychological, with the expectations of horror much scarier than its realization. Nothing in The Haunting will scare you, which is especially disappointing since its first half sets the stage for chills and thrills that never materialize.
While there are some funny lines, particularly those delivered by Wilson, it isn't clear whether most of the laughs are intentional or not. There is one scene -- where the caretaker's wife, warns the visitors about nightfall -- that is intentionally, I'm hoping, funny and campy. But during the other laugh-inducing scenes, I suspect you'll end up laughing at the film rather than with it.
