The Haunting (1999)

18 October 2020

The Haunting (1999) came out of that period of time where films tried leveraging CGI, but the effects were generally bad. As a result, a lot of average movies banked on "better than before" graphics instead of good ones - in my opinion anyway. This film took an aim at haunted house films, but felt like it never focused on making any one thing good about the movie. The house held a bunch of spirits that didn't really make sense, and the main character Eleanor (Lili Taylor) is sent to the house as part of an insomnia/fear study to save the day. The main characters fell into beige, as Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Owen Wilson are all present in the film but somehow do very little the whole time. The tone of the film start is almost campy initially, with the housekeeper spiel "no one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that - in the night, in the dark." But you don't really get a sense that the house ever was that invasive on peoples' lives. Since the story stays relatively flat and boring it'll never be anything that gets you saying "I should watch that again". 4/10