Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
Dr. David Marrow invites three distinct individuals to the eerie and isolated Hill House to be subjects for a sleep disorder study. The unfortunate guests discover that Marrow is far more interested in the sinister mansion itself — and they soon see the true nature of its horror.
The 1999 remake of The Haunting squanders its source material — Shirley Jackson's classic novel — with a bloated, CGI-heavy approach that prioritizes spectacle over dread. The plot is derivative and telegraphed, stripping away the psychological ambiguity that made the original compelling. Acting is largely flat, with an ensemble (Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lili Taylor) that feels underutilized or miscast. Cinematography has some genuine visual ambition — the production design of Hill House is impressively grand and the compositions occasionally striking — earning it a modest lift. Novelty is low; rather than finding a fresh angle on the haunted house genre, it retreats into by-the-numbers CGI ghost sequences that were already feeling dated at release. The ending is overwrought and unsatisfying, relying on a clumsy supernatural resolution that undercuts whatever tension had been built.