Let me start with a true story. A terrifying story.
In the 70s, when I was a chunky youth, I had a buddy who owned a super 8 video camera. We were young, bored, and full of energy, so we decided to make our own scary movie using crap we found around the house. In the wake of "The Blair Witch Project", maybe we were onto something. Maybe not. Anyway, the movie featured every horror movie cliché known to mankind. It featured me, off camera, making a rocking chair rock "by itself" (TERROR!) with a string. It featured me, off camera, making lights go on and off (HORROR!). And as the finale, it featured me, covered in a sheet and sitting at a piano, tinkling the ivories in ghostly fashion (DREAD!).
Naturally, the results sucked runny eggs.
However, it was scarier than "THE HAUNTING".
THE HAUNTING is a big budget fright-fest filled with big stars, not so big stars, and some of the dullest moments ever put on film. The story goes like this (and please bear with me if I get some things wrong, as the entire time I was fighting to keep my last meal firmly rooted in my belly).......
Liam Neeson is a doctor who decides he will do a study of fear and the effect it has on people (uh, it SCARES them and sometimes they pee themselves). So he rents (??) a huge mansion filled with rooms designed and laid out by a certified looney, and places an ad to have people who have insomnia come and stay in this fright filled place, not knowing that they are rats in a maze (as he puts it). Occasionally he talks into a small pocket tape recorder, letting the viewer know that he's really doing an in-depth study. Little does he know that the house is (are you ready for this?).... REALLY HAUNTED!
And so, we wait for spooky things to happen. They never do.
The rest of the cast arrives at the house and with one exception, I've never seen a more annoying cast of characters. I WANTED bad things to happen to them, simply because I didn't like them. Lets meet them, shall we?
Lilli Taylor plays Nell. The house is trying to tell Nell something. She can't seem to figure out what. And so we sit for 2 hours while she tries to figure it out. It's like taking 2 hours to explain an obvious and unfunny punchline to a woman in a coma. And who the hell *IS* Lilli Taylor anyway? She got the "AND" in the cast credits, a place normally reserved for big stars who take on smaller roles. Is she a big star? Did she light up the screen last summer in a wonderful and breathtaking movie that I may have missed out on? Is she the kid of someone famous? Can someone please tell her that he cannot act terrified to save herself?!
Next up is Owen Wilson. WHY does Hollywood need an Owen Wilson? He's that blonde dude who always looks like an out of place surfer in every role he is in. I cheered when he got eaten in "Anaconda", and unless something changes, I will WEEP each and every time I see his name on movie credits. I just don't like his head, his face, his voice.........
And then there is Catherine Zeta-Jones, one of the most beautiful women on the planet. She plays a bisexual woman with an appetite for kinkiness. This is established early in the film with some tension between Catherine and Lilli Taylor, and then it goes......... NOWHERE!
Talk about unfulfilled promise.
Yes, there are other people in the movie, but we don't care enough about them and they don't appear long enough to even matter. Bruce Dern appears briefly as the caretaker of the house, and while Bruce is always good, he isn't in this film long enough to save it from the swirling cesspool that drags it down right to the end.
I guess I've left out the biggest star of the film, the house itself. Not a full 20 minutes goes by that we don't see a nice aerial shot of the house. I suppose the effect they were trying for was like something out of THE SHINING. However, after the 5th aerial fly-by shot of the house, we've seen it all, and we are tired of it.
Which brings me to the special effects. Yes, this movie is filled with special effects, but they are all so similar that after the first 3 shots you just don't care to see anymore. Yes, the first time we see an inanimate object move, it is pretty cool, but how many different statues, bookcases, handrails, ceilings and other chunks of the house do we have to see move before we start to wonder if a chunky young ME is sitting off camera moving them with a string? After awhile the special effects become the stars, and even they are not entertaining enough to raise an eyebrow, let alone scare us out of the theater seats.
I don't ask much from a horror movie. I grew up loving them but I surely don't ask much of them. If you can't be scary, then be funny, and if you can't be funny, then be quiet. THE HAUNTING ended up leaving me feeling like I had wasted a few hours of my life, something I RARELY feel, no matter how bad a movie is. If I still had a copy of that nameless film that featured me sitting at a piano wearing a sheet, I could show director Jan De Bont that you don't need big dollars to make furniture move. My movie could give THE HAUNTING some serious competition. I mean, who would you rather see in a sheet, me or Catherine Zeta-Jones?
Ok, don't answer that.
Until next time, the balcony is condemned.