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rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
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So here is the second of 1999's remakes of classic horror movies. The first was the dumb, pathetic but OK remake of the classic 'The Haunting'. Now comes the highly awaited remake of House On Haunted Hill. The classic which starred Vincent Price as a man who pays a group of people 100,000 to stay in his house. If they survive the night they get the money. If not well you get the jurisdiction. Having not yet seen the film (DVD on its way) I wasn't sure if I would really like the remake. But sure enough it comes through and has a great storyline to fall back on.
Geoffrey Rush (in a fantastic role with an incredible performance) is Steven Price, the owner of an amusement park destined to scare the wits out of people. His wife Evelyn Price is throwing a party with her friends. Steven dismays at the idea and makes his own list. Somehow someone, or something changes that list and five other people are invited to the party. Eddie (Taye Diggs) an ex-baseball player, Sarah (Ali Carter) an ex-assistant who can re-wire anything, Melissa (Brigette Wilson) a talk-show host in sorts, Dr. Blackburn (Peter Ghallager), and Watson (Chris Kattan) a smart-mouthed humorist in ways. What he is gonna do is pay these five people 1,000,000 dollars if they can survive through the night. If they can they get the money, if not well they don't.
The House On Haunted Hill used to be an insane asylum. Years before mental patients broke out and killed the Dr. there, forcing him to lock the place up because if he died, so did they. Everyone who was in there burned to death. Now it is Steven Price's home and he is throwing this party for these five people. What starts out as a seemingly normal night, turns into a horrifying, blood splattering night. The deep dark secrets of what really happened in that asylum and why those guests are actually there are revealed. One-by-one the people start to disappear. Conspiracies start to turn up, and Steven Price finds out that his house may be alive after all. The people find rooms, which once held mental patients. Rooms which once had people dying. Rooms which may still contain these people. Now these five people must try and survive the night and try and survive the house, and they must survive each other with terrorfying results.
Since I officially haven't seen the original I can't say which is better. I can say however I liked this movie. Geoffrey Rush gives a one in a million performance as the rich Steven Price, and does a great job doing a Vincent Price role. Famke Jansen as his wife was great and even kind of eerie at times. Ali Carter and Taye Diggs sort of become the main characters and Ali Carter who debuted in Varsity Blues gives a fantastic performance here as does Taye Diggs. Chris Kattan gives us great comic relief and the movie contains a lot of comical lines. Peter Ghallager and Brigette Wilson were great as well and gave commanding performances as potential victims.
The plot was well conceived and was very absorbing. The movie has atmosphere the whole way through that is disturbing and creepy, and even sometimes downright scary. I found even the opening credits to me a little ominous. One thing I knew not to expect was a 'Haunting' type movie with special effects galore. Even though it had fantastic gore and special effects, the movie has only a 19 million dollar budget, which doesn's show all the way through but you can tell. The movie was written well, and it's only major flaw is the under-developed characters and plot holes that we are left with. The ending is quite clever and some may not even get it. I must say House On Haunted Hill was a surprise. I was expecting another Haunting with special effects, no scares and a dumb ending. Instead I found a good Halloween movie with gore, scares and great acting. House On Haunted Hill is one of those movies you really can't take seriously. Though it is a well-made movie with a good storyline it still has some flaws. But besides that the movie is fun, smart and scary and makes us wonder why remakes like this can't be made all the time!
By : Brandon Herring
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rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
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The House on Haunted Hill: it's alive
The premise of The House on Haunted Hill is as schlocky as they come: whoever lives through the night gets a million dollars. Forget about all the foreshadowing and character motivations and exposition &etc that a typical horror movie usually has to wade through in order to get to the haunted house. The House on Haunted Hill neatly circumvents all that, via 'random' invitations. Meaning of course there's that many more minutes it can devote to horror. Which is to say it can pack more scares into two hours than your typical horror movie.
It all starts in a mental hospital that would do Terry Gilliam proud: all electroshock and twisting pipes--the interior of the house on haunted hill, where the inmates are in the process of doing to the doctors what the doctors have been doing to them all along. Disturbing Behavior type stuff, times about twenty-six. And the mad doctor here is none other than evil Dr. Vannacutt, a cenobite candidate if there ever was one. Fifty years later, all that remains is the building, which entertainment park mogul Steven Price (Casanova Frankenstein himself, Geoffrey Rush) chooses as the extravagant site of his wife Evelyn's (Famke Janssen, recovered from The Faculty perhaps, going for another Lord of Illusions role) birthday party. Add to this five anonymous guests and the fact that Steven and Evelyn are each using the 'party' as a means of murdering the other, and you've got The House on Haunted Hill.
But it's more than that, too. If The Blair Witch Project disturbed us with the unseen, then The House on Haunted Hill disturbs us with what we have to see. From the opening credits until the last ten minutes (when it loses it, trying to portray evil as black smoke) it's something of a mix between the imagery of a Marilyn Manson video and the stop-motion feel of a Jan Svankmajer short, with some Jakob's Ladder thrown in for good measure. And forget about The Haunting. This is a whole nother neighborhood, a significantly darker neighborhood. Too, with Zemeckis and Silver at the controls, you know the whole thing's going to be a music-fed adrenaline rush, complete with the necessary level of comedy, which Chris Kattan's Pritchett delivers time and again.
In keeping with the spirit of things, the guests/contestants--Eddie (Taye Diggs), Sarah Wolfe (Ali Larter), Melissa Marr (Bridgette Wilson) and Dr. Blackburn (Peter Gallagher)-all do what they're supposed to do, which more or less just includes fighting among themselves, separating, and investigating those things which should never ever be investigated. And of course they tend to die gruesome little deaths, which just serves to remind us that this isn't Hitchcock: the horror is no longer in the motion being completed off-screen, in our minds. Now it's right there, for better or worse. A lot of the images we take with us too, whether we want to or not. Specifically, how director William Malone rearranges the human face from time to time--lengthening the jaw, erasing the eyes, enlarging the mouth, all of which disturbs us at a primal level. We're comfortable with an augmented face, so long as it has recognizable, bilateral features. Take that away though, and things aren't so comfortable anymore.
The House on Haunted Hill does make you want to look away at times, yes, but it's that kind of wanting-to-look-away you pay for, too, you peek through your fingers for. And, as narrative counterballast, it does have it's tongue-in-cheek moments. Take how Pritchett's Brad-and-Janet mobile has characteristically broken down, as if the flaw in that particular model is that it tends to putter out in the presence of lonely, deserted houses. And, as with most horror, The House on Haunted Hill has its weak moments as well, when a character's comeback to whatever situation falls flat, but so be it. The next scene is guaranteed to either make you forget it or die trying, which is what a good Halloween release is all about.
By : Stephen Graham Jones (http://www.cinemuck.com)
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