Review #306: The Haunting (1999)

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #23- The Haunting (1999)

[Last month The Haunting was streaming on Pluto; unfortunately it appears to no longer be. I don't think there is anywhere free to stream The Haunting, but I believe it's available on AMC+, Paramount+, and Philo if you have a subscription, or can be rented/purchased on other platforms as well.]

I remember seeing trailers for The Haunting when it first came out in '99- although I'd seen a small handful of horror films by that age (and although it was rated PG-13, which meant I totally could have seen it if I wanted) I always just assumed it wasn't for me. I finally did see the movie, however, many years later- I watched it specifically because my wife and I had taken such a liking to Scary Movie 2, and we were overjoyed to see how closely the parody stuck to the plot and even included lots of obscure details. We watched this movie many times back in the day, but my re-watch today came after at least ten years since my last viewing, and to be honest I remembered very little going in.

The Haunting follows Nell, a woman who is about to be evicted from her home after caring for her infirm mother for several years until her passing. To her surprise she gets invited to take part in a scientific research study dealing with insomnia- she and two others are going to spend a few days living in an old creepy mansion and recording their experiences. While there, the man in charge of the study, Dr. Marrow, tells them a story about the original owner of the house: Hugh Crain, a rich textile magnate who desperately wanted children so he built this giant estate to house them all, but his wife delivered only stillborn children over the years. However, Dr. Marrow also lets slip some other details- Crain may have been an evil, violent man, and this likely drove his wife to kill herself in the house.

Over the next couple days, Nell starts experiencing some paranormal activity, hearing voices and seeing the ghosts of the Crain's many stillborn children, and she is led into a secret library where she finds ledgers of his employees (many of whom were children, and many of whom died on the job). As she begins to spiral more and more into what appears to be a madness of some kind, Dr. Marrow admits that he made up the story about Hugh Crain (or rather, he fed the group details and let them make up the story on their own)- because this isn't a study about insomnia, it's secretly a study about fear and group hysteria. But regardless of what the experiment was, there is a very real, very malevolent ghostly presence in the house- and only Nell can stop it, because she isn't just some random person, she has learned that she is Crain's great-great-granddaughter, and she needs to protect the spirits of all of these children that died under his care.

So, I just learned today that this movie is a remake- or at least, it's an adaptation of a book that has already been made into a 1963 film of the same name. (There has also been a Netflix series by Mike Flanagan based on that book, but that is a much looser adaptation. It's really good though, you should watch it.) There's a lot of small details in the movie that didn't really make sense to me even though I've ostensibly seen this movie several times, which I think might just be a symptom of the story having been condensed into a sub-2 hour story instead of however long the book was. I also feel like a lot of the dialogue is kind of clunky and/or delivered very cheesily, which might also be a symptom of the script being adapted from a much older source, or it could just be that this is a late-90s film and so the acting sensibilities were low-priority. I should also mention that there's a lot of CGI in this movie, and as you might expect it's nothing like what I would consider "good" today, but I actually want to praise the CGI in here because it really seems like they knew the limitations it had when making this movie, since most of the time the CGI is very obscured, or very faint, or is imitating an object that's not intended to look particularly real- so the end result is that in most cases, the CGI actually ends up looking pretty freaking good all things considered.

As I said with Scary Movie 2, I absolutely love the setting, even if it's a bit ridiculous at times. This mansion is gigantic- way bigger than any human being would ever have- and I don't just mean the overall estate, I mean everything. The bedrooms have massive floor plans bigger than most houses and ceilings that are easily 20+ feet high. The bathrooms have multiple sets of double-doors leading into them. The fireplace is so big multiple people can stand at full height and walk into it standing shoulder-to-shoulder and still have room to swing their arms around. This house inexplicably has a room that functions as a merry-go-round that never becomes plot-relevant. Whoever designed the sets for this movie were clearly given a massive budget and had a fantastic time designing all of the ridiculous and huge locations for everything to take place, but I am here for all of it.

Even if it's a bit cheesy, I think this is a very well-made movie. The story is intriguing with multiple twists and turns. There's some genuinely terrifying moments (like when the house begins physically warping itself, even tearing itself apart to terrorize and threaten the characters within) and you never really know who's going to be safe and who isn't. Plus, this movie was directly responsible for the creation of Scary Movie 2, so I have to give it extra points for that.

If you haven't seen this movie, go watch it!

Overall Rating: 9/10 Long-Range Pez Dispensers

Nostalgic Rating: 9/10 Lion Heads In The Fireplace

Script Connections: Stephen King wrote the first draft of the script for this movie (and it was set to be filmed by Stephen Spielberg). However, so many changes were made that King dropped out and re-worked his script into the miniseries Rose Red.