Some people confuse the story of Hill House with the badly made movie "The Haunting of Hell House". The plots are very similar but the Shirley Jackson story is far superior. Jan de Bont could have made a delightfully terrifying movie but instead made a movie in which the special effects are comical. Stained glass that becomes eyes, ceilings that twist and swell. The set designer for this movie missed an opportunity to use available technology to scare the daylights out of us. Instead of a truly frightening house, we got a mishmash of tacky decor and comically used sculptures. The only element of Gothic scariness was the painting of Hugh Crain at the top of the stairs. The house looked as though it had been a project on HGTV's Designer Finals and the designers lost. The story, itself, could have been retold by de Bont, in a way that would put it right up there with the 1963 version but he chose instead to try and frighten us with cartoon-like special effects and a lackluster and disjointed script. Too much about the Hugh Crain story is left as a puzzle. But, the biggest puzzle of all was why de Bont wasted all that talent and money to give us such a disappointing movie.
Review of The Haunting
