I’ll cut to the chase: This film is a hot mess. It basically takes all the interesting bits of the 1963 version and book and strips them of anything atmospheric or subtle to make room for CGI GHOSTS.
I don’t hate CGI just for the sake of hating it. CGI can be used to enhance or create animation. It can be seamless with other special effects. But not in this film, where Director Jan de Bont hopes that you won’t notice the wooden acting or plot holes because you’ll be so distracted with the CGI curtain ghosts and loud noises.
Spoilers ahead!
Theo, Dr. Marrow, Eleanor, and Luke in The Haunting 1999. Source: IMDB
To recap: In the 1963 film, Eleanor has been caretaker to her ailing mother for 11 years, and now that her mother has died, her sister and brother-in-law are letting her stay in the apartment on the couch and refuse to let her drive the car she owns half of. She gets invited to stay at Hill House for a study on ghosts due to her experiences with a poltergeist as a child but also because of her empathy. The other guests are anthropologist Dr. Markway, who researches ghosts; Theodora, who has ESP; and the heir, Luke, who doesn’t have any special powers. Later, they are joined by Dr. Markway’s wife Grace, who is a skeptic. Most of what is ghostly is unseen: horrible clanking and roaring sounds, someone clutching Eleanor’s hand in the night, the compulsion Eleanor feels toward the house. Eleanor has not properly lived and has never gotten to be invited or or included in anything; she wants to belong. Dr. Markway wants to prove ghosts are worthy of study; Luke wants to prove to himself the house he’ll inherit isn’t haunted; Theo is hiding something behind her fabulous outfits–a lover she isn’t married to and an attraction to Eleanor she is trying to suppress (whether not to be outed or not to cheat is unclear).
WE’RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT’S 1999. Catherine Zeta-Jones as Theo in a leather shirt, and Lili Taylor as Eleanor Vance, wearing a black turtleneck and frumpy corduroy jacket in The Haunting (1999). Source: IMDB
What the remake gives us is EXTREME EVERYTHING. Dr. Marrow studies THE SCIENCE OF FEAR. Theo is BI AF AND FLY AF, at least in terms of 1999 fashions (yikes) and EVERYONE WANTS TO DO HER CUZ SHES HOT AND BI AND POLY. Eleanor REALLY WANTS TO BE A PART OF A FAMILY. Luke is OWEN WILSON. Instead of an anthropologist pushing the limits of the field by inviting folks with an affinity for the supernatural and also the heir I guess, Marrow is conducting a social experiment about inducing fear under the guise of a sleep study for insomniacs that I’m pretty sure would not be approved by the ISRB.
EXTREME. Eleanor, in her nightgown, is pinned to her bed by spiky bed posts. Source: IMDB
A lot has changed since 1963 of course, so of course you have to update characters and their motivations to convey the same material and themes to a contemporary audience. 1963!Theo knows that being honest about living with a partner to whom she isn’t married, especially if that partner is a woman, is something she can’t just casually tell people. Her flipping between being affectionate and cold towards Eleanor could be self-preservation (Eleanor knows too much) or it could be fear of Eleanor’s increasingly erratic behavior, but Theo’s attitude lends itself to the creepy atmosphere. In 1999, coming out as bi or cohabiting is significantly less of a social barrier for most people, but instead of having Just Theo: Psychic Poly Bisexual Whose Partners Do Not Get Along, she doesn’t have any supernatural powers. I think Theo and Luke were supposed to act as foils to Eleanor in that they are insomniacs who don’t experience supernatural happenings whereas Eleanor is drawn to the house because of her familial connection to it.
A major stylistic change is that Eleanor is the narrator of the original film and the third-person limited POV character for most of the book, which includes her lengthy internal monologues, done as voice-overs in the 1963 version. I was curious to see how the 1999 film would handle Eleanor’s interiority. Instead, its mostly just a bunch of shouting about OMG FAMILY.
He killed them. Hugh Crain. The children from the mills. It’s just like you said. He wanted to fill the house with the sounds of children. He took from his mills and he brought them here, but he wouldn’t let them go. He would never let them go.
Shouting and more shouting…
I will not let you hurt a CHILD!
Another criticism I have of the 1999 film regarding lack of subtlety is Eleanor’s connection to the house. In the 1963 film, Eleanor’s background as a caregiver for her mother mirrors the story of the caregiver who neglected Abigail Crain and then committed suicide; it’s unclear if she loves the house because she wants freedom from her family or because she might be related by blood or by spiritual means. In the 1999 version, the director decided to make the connection that Eleanor is the descendant of Hugh Crain, the original owner, and that her great-grandmother Carolyn, Crain’s second wife, escaped him. There’s nothing wrong with that other than the hamfisted way it’s revealed: not through Chekhov’s monogrammed necklace, which Eleanor takes from her mother’s bedside, but she
- Finds a book of photos that includes Crain’s second wife and she just knows
- She announces that she’s his descendant to everyone
- THEN she sees the necklace in the portrait and is like “oh hey”
- Then gets stuck in the mirrored merry-go-round room, which shows her her pregnant doppelgänger Carolyn, “proving” she’s family.
As if being in a haunted fucking house isn’t scary enough, we get another addition to the story: Crain murdered his own kids probably and definitely disappeared a bunch of his factory workers who were children. The ghosts of the children are scared of the ghost of Crain, so Eleanor has to free them by fighting her great grandfathers ghost and then dying I guess because surrogate motherhood is martyrdom? Sure, movie, okay. I mean, I know Eleanor dies in the original film, but she crashes into a tree trying to escape from the others who want to take her away from Hill House, not because she punched her ghost grandad and freed the children.
Eleanor touches an carving of a child’s head. This actually happened in the book, so okay FINE. Source: IMDB
Let’s not even talk about Luke dying by getting beheaded by the chimney flue for no reason.
In short, by trying to update a subtle and spooky film, director stripped it of anything it had going for it by trying to make it EXTREME. I gotta go get some Surge and Gushers, MOOOOOOM, I’ll be right back.
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