The Haunting dvd movie.|
The Haunting buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
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List Price: $9.99 Our Price: $9.99 Features • AC-3 • Anamorphic • Closed-captioned • Color • Dolby • DVD-Video • Special Edition • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 1999 DVD Release : 23 November, 1999 |
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The Haunting description Suffering from the extreme bad luck of being released at the same time as the low-budget The Blair Witch Project, this adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House attempts to update Shirley Jackson's psychologically terrifying ghost story to the era of big-budget, computerized special effects. Does it work? Well, let's just say that showing isn't exactly the same as telling. A prime example of bloated studio filmmaking, The Haunting telegraphs all its frights so blatantly that it forsakes any of Jackson's subtle horrors for the remedial scares of a clunky carnival ride. The story remains basically the same, with four people called to an old mansion for experiments in the supernatural, but instead of getting inside the heads of its main characters (as the 1963 adaptation by Robert Wise did so well), Jan DeBont's film deserts character development for the huge, glorious set design provided by Eugenio Zanetti (Restoration). Thus, instead of a well-drawn story you get... a well-drawn house, one that four very talented and underutilized actors--Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Liam Neeson, and Owen Wilson--wander around in endlessly (as Zeta-Jones puts it, the house is "sort of Charles Foster Kane meets the Munsters"). Taylor, as the hypersensitive Nell, is the unknowing lynchpin in the battle between good and bad ghosts and gets saddled with most of the expository dialogue of the mansion's gothic backstory. Zeta-Jones (showing some spark) and Neeson (showing none) are sadly reduced to providing reactionary shots of the film's disastrous climax, which mixes hapless new-age affirmations with computer-generated effects of ghosts and exploding windows, walls, doors, etc. For this haunted-house story, take a quick tour of the breathtaking rooms, but definitely don't stay the night. --Mark Englehart |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Zoiks! and Jinkies! |
| On the surface, this movie has everything it needs to place it in the horror section of any video store, and admittedly, it is not scary at all. But something made me wonder if it was really meant to be scary or was it just a story with a few classic horror elements included to support the storyline. This had all the feel of an old Scooby Doo cartoon, and I love it for that. It never even really felt like the intent was to scare us. This is just a fun movie. I loved all the characters, least of which (although I liked her somewhat) was Theo. A little too bouncy and bubbly for her age, but she is CZJ, so she is forgiven. A few jump scares and they even managed to formulate a PG-13 decap. The CGI was a bit (a bit???) over the top. But I loved the story. Enough to forgive a little too much CGI and a few cheesey lines. It won't make you piss yourself, but if you are a fan of the actors - and I am - it's a great movie to own. | |
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