The Haunting Reviews
Director Jan De Bont may have made a cow fly in Twister, but he can't keep the howling dog called The Haunting from spinning into FX excess.
When The Haunting finally limps to its conclusion, you may feel like booing the screen.
The actors are basically helpless with this.
The only thing scary about the new version is realizing that someone keeps giving director Jan De Bont money to make movies.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
If you crave horror, you're better off seeing The Blair Witch Project a second or third.
In The Haunting, the moviemakers succeed in something very difficult: creating a haunted house with real personality and terror.
The more this new Haunting tries to impress with its state-of-the-art techniques, the more it recalls how much Wise accomplished with eerie lighting effects and mysterious noises on the soundtrack.
The characters are on the dramatic equivalent of Death Row.
A passable piece of summer hokum, but it underlines how difficult it has become to make an effective horror movie.
All logic is deadened by the obnoxious special effects!
So breathtakingly bad, so unintentionally funny that it could take on the status of a camp classic.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Top CriticAn overpriced mess!
A lavish illustration of how to take a fairly modest black-and -white horror film from 1963 and amplify it so relentlessly that the sight of the flying cow in Twister would not be all that amiss.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
A mess, a jumble of fancy special effects that are supposed to be scary but are really just fancy, further decorated with dribbles of dialogue, most of which are unintentionally hilarious.
The Haunting is a muddled mess that defies any rationality.
This film relies on special effects instead of suggestion, plot instead of mood, and explanation instead of mystery.
There are few truly frightening moments in the film, little tension or real sense of menace, and the camp humor that is suggested in early scenes dissipates fairly quickly.
To my surprise, I find myself recommending The Haunting on the basis of its locations, its sets, its art direction, its sound design, and the overall splendor of its visuals.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Shockingly short on suggestiveness and restraint.
