The Haunting

Plot

Eleanor "Nell" Vance, an insomniac, has cared for her disabled mother for 11 years, sharing a Boston apartment with her. After her mother dies, Nell's sister Jane and her husband Lou inherit the residence and eject Nell to prepare for a sale. As she faces homelessness, Nell accepts an invitation to participate in an insomnia study by Dr. David Marrow at Hill House, a secluded, sprawling manor in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. At the house, she meets Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, the eccentric caretakers. Two other participants soon arrive: the goofy Luke Sanderson, and Theodora ("Theo"), a glamorous, openly bisexual artist. Dr. Marrow and his two research assistants, Mary and Todd, follow. Unknown to the participants, Dr. Marrow's true purpose is to study the psychological response to fear, intending to expose his subjects to terror.

During their first night, Dr. Marrow relates the story of Hill House: Its original owner, Hugh Crain, a 19th-century textile tycoon, constructed the rambling home for his wife Renee, hoping to populate it with a large family. Unfortunately, all of Crain's children were stillborns, and Renee, devastated by the multiple losses, killed herself, while Crain became a recluse.

Following this, Mary is wounded in a freak accident involving a snapped piano wire, and leaves with Todd to go to the hospital. Supernatural events begin happening, and Nell sees apparitions of children. A large portrait of Hugh Crain is vandalized with the words "Welcome Home Eleanor" written in blood. Theo and Luke accuse Nell, claiming she is seeking attention.

Nell becomes determined to prove that the house is haunted. She finds Crain's hidden study and learns that he extensively used child labor in his cotton mills. He tortured and killed orphans in his home, then burned their bodies in the fireplace. She surmises that these children's spirits are trapped in the house, providing Crain with an "eternal family". Crain had a second wife named Carolyn, from whom Nell is descended. Dr. Marrow is skeptical and reveals the truth of his fear study to the group, but after a statue comes to life and tries to drown him, he realizes Hill House is haunted. Nell reveals that she is related to Carolyn Crain and must help the children move on to the afterlife.

The group tries to leave Hill House but Hugh Crain's ghost traps them inside. Luke defaces a portrait of Crain, enraging his spirit to decapitate Luke with a large chimney flue. When Crain manifests, Nell realizes that he thrived on the fear he created in children and declares that she is not afraid of him. Her declaration weakens the ghost and he is cast into a decorative bronze door depicting the distressed children in purgatory. He drags Nell with him, but the benevolent spirits release her and she dies. Nell's soul, along with those of the freed children, ascends to heaven.

Production

Development

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg approached horror author Stephen King in 1996 about making a haunted house film, and the two agreed that Robert Wise's 1963 film The Haunting was a benchmark of cinematic haunted house horror. After collaborating on a screenplay partly based on Wise's film (an adaptation of the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House), Spielberg and King ran into creative differences, and the project was ultimately aborted. Spielberg pushed forward with the project, commissioning first-time screenwriter David Self to write a screenplay for the film. King went on to retool his rendition of the material into the 2002 miniseries Rose Red, which shares some elements of both Wise's 1963 film, as well as Jackson's source novel.

While Jan de Bont was working on post-production for Twister, Spielberg offered to take over directing duties on Minority Report in exchange for directing The Haunting. De Bont did not want the film to be a remake of the 1963 version, as he wanted to focus more on the book that it was adapted from.

Casting

The casting of Liam Neeson, Lili Taylor, and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the lead roles was announced in September 1998, with Neeson portraying Dr. Marrow, Taylor portraying Nell Vance, and Zeta-Jones portraying Theodora. Owen Wilson was cast as Luke Sanderson, the third subject of Marrow's study. Bruce Dern and Marian Seldes were cast as Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, the eccentric and superstitious caretakers of Hill House, respectively.

Filming

Principal photography began on November 30, 1998. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel was originally hired to shoot the film, but left over creative differences one week into filming. He was replaced by Karl Walter Lindenlaub. VistaVision cameras were used extensively during the filming process.

Harlaxton Manor in Lincolnshire, England, was used as the exterior of Hill House while its Great Hall served as the games room scene where Marrow comforts Nell after seeing the bloodied "Welcome Home Eleanor" writing and where Nell reveals Hugh Crain's crimes. The kitchen and pantry scenes were filmed inside Belvoir Castle.

The majority of the interior sets were built inside the dome-shaped hangar that once housed Hughes H-4 Hercules, near the permanently docked RMS Queen Mary steamship, in Long Beach, California. The handcrafted interior sets cost an estimated $8–10 million to construct, and were designed by Argentine production designer Eugenio Zanetti. De Bont recalled that Zanetti "was an unusual choice for a horror movie, but I thought of this more as an opera. I wanted the set to be as much a character as the lead actors, so I needed someone who had done something like that. My research led me to Eugenio, I explained to him what I was looking for and the set he came up with was absolutely spectacular." De Bont cited the film The Innocents (1961) as an inspiration for the film's appearance and cinematography.

Post-production

Following principal photography, the film's elaborate visual effects were completed by Phil Tippett, who had previously provided effects work on Jurassic Park (1993).

The studio demanded a new ending be shot as executives felt de Bont's original ending "lacked clarity." The revised ending was completed in June 1999 with the involvement of Taylor and Zeta-Jones. According to de Bont: "We added some shots of the spirits of the children... well, I'm not going to give it all away." Additionally, a brief romantic scene between Taylor and Zeta-Jones's characters was excised from the final cut. Commenting on this, Taylor said: "It doesn't surprise me that it was lost. It didn't feel very integral to the story, anyway."

According to de Bont, the original cut of the film was potentially facing an R-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). "It was a little hard to get a PG-13 [rating]. They basically said it was too tense. So we trimmed a couple of things. This is a movie that kids can see. There's no foul language, no guns, no violence, really. What's happening is... it's more surreal. It's not like someone's surprising you with a chain saw." The film was edited by Michael Kahn, a frequent collaborator of Steven Spielberg.

Release

The Haunting had its world premiere at the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles on July 20, 1999. It was subsequently given a wide theatrical release in North America on July 23, 1999, screening in 2,808 theaters. It was released in the United Kingdom alongside Analyze This on September 24, 1999.

Home media

The Haunting was released on VHS and DVD by DreamWorks Home Entertainment on November 23, 1999. Following Paramount Pictures' acquisition of DreamWorks, Paramount reissued the film on DVD in October 2017.

In October 2020, Paramount released the film on Blu-ray featuring a new 4K restoration under their "Paramount Presents" Blu-ray line. On February 27, 2023, Scream Factory announced a forthcoming 4K UHD Blu-ray release that was released on May 30, 2023.

Reception

Box office

The film earned $33,435,140 during its opening weekend, ranking in first place ahead of Inspector Gadget, American Pie and Eyes Wide Shut. It became the second consecutive number one DreamWorks film to open on the third weekend of July after Independence Day, following Saving Private Ryan. It was overtaken by Runaway Bride during its second weekend, falling into fourth place behind the latter film, The Blair Witch Project and Deep Blue Sea with a 54.4% decline and a gross of $15.2 million.

In the United Kingdom, the film beat out Analyze This and Eyes Wide Shut to top the box office, collecting $2.1 million. In its second weekend, it made $1.8 million, dropping into second place below Big Daddy. The film remained in theatrical release until November 1999. It ultimately grossed $91,411,151 in North America, and $85,900,000 in international markets, making for a worldwide gross of $177,311,151.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 17% of 103 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Sophisticated visual effects fail to offset awkward performances and an uneven script." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 45 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 42 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert gave the film a favorable review, awarding it three stars out of four, and praising the production design in particular: "To my surprise, I find myself recommending The Haunting based on its locations, its sets, its art direction, its sound design, and the overall splendor of its visuals. The story is a mess, but for long periods that hardly matters. It's beside the point, as we enter one of the most striking spaces I've ever seen in a film." Similar sentiments were echoed by The New York Times's Janet Maslin, who deemed the film "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... the film's spooky tricks are orchestrated by top-notch behind-the-scenes talent, who augment Mr. De Bont's tireless efforts to keep things moving." David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor similarly noted that, though the film "falls short of Jackson's teeming imagination, paying more attention to a ponderous historical subplot... the best reason to see The Haunting is the sheer sumptuousness of its creepy-crawly set designs. The second-best reason is Lili Taylor, whose sincerity and conviction could make any script come at least partly alive."

Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune praised Taylor's lead performance, and noted of the cast: "As an ensemble, they're all fun to watch. Very few actors, though, could upstage this house—especially when [set designer] Zanetti and visual effects supervisors Phil Tippett and Craig Hayes haul out the computer magic to wage all-out war on the human foursome." Todd McCarthy of Variety praised the film's set design, but found its screenplay lackluster, noting that the film "dooms itself from the outset with a setup that is too artificial for the subsequent drama to be compelling, and with characters whose lack of a strong purpose severely limits their interest. The only thing that keeps you going for a time is the sense that it's going to get better, that something wild and scary is bound to happen eventually." Stephanie Zacharek of Salon equated the film to "a roller-coaster ride