The Haunting (1999)
With this horror remake, Robert Wise’s chilling 1963 haunted house movie (based on Shirley Jackson’s acclaimed novel, The Haunting of Hill House) is transformed into a big-budget Hollywood disaster. The movie centers around the conflict between a team of paranormal investigators (Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones among them) and the foreboding mansion (complete with a sinister past) in which they are determined to spend several nights.
The original Haunting is a masterpiece of implied horror, as very little in the film is actually seen. Instead, the unnerving sound effects and disorienting camera work merely suggest the scares—and to terrifying effect. By contrast, the misbegotten remake replaces the understated scares of the original with laughably over-the-top CGI effects and a general disregard for anything approaching subtlety.
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