Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones in "The Haunting."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Liam Neeson and Lili Taylor Director: Jan De Bont Rated: PG-13, profanity, brief but strong violence Length: 117 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(July 23, 1999) -- Bigger is not always better, and special effects can't make the movie. That's the lesson in The Haunting, Jan De Bont's glossy but lackluster remake of a good 1963 film.

Stars Liam Neeson and Lili Taylor bring talent and class but they can't clear up a murky finale or elevate this ghost story beyond a few modest thrills.

Like the first film, The Haunting is based on Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, detailing the psychology research of Dr. David Marrow (Neeson), who wants to sample reactions to fear. He selects three individuals and fibs to them that they're to assemble for a study on sleep disorder. Instead, he watches how they respond to the frights in a haunted country mansion.

Chief among the patients is Eleanor (Taylor), a sensitive care-giver who's adrift after years of nursing her sickly, and now deceased mother. When nightly knocks and rumbles are heard -- and ghosts start dancing in the draperies -- Eleanor's sympathetic nature overcomes her fears. "I can choose to be a victim or a volunteer. I'll be a volunteer," she says.

The other, less defined members of the group are Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a worldly bisexual whose bravado fails to mask her insecurities, and Luke (Owen Wilson), a nondescript young man who walks the mansion's many halls with a baseball glove and ball, as if he's seeking the ghosts from Field of Dreams.

Marrow is also on site, but we never really get to know much about him . (An actor of Neeson's skill must have been frustrated with the thin script.)

With David Self's weak screenplay, the picture is largely carried by Taylor, a remarkable actress best known for various independent projects such as I Shot Andy Warhol. But even she can't make us appreciate or truly understand the convoluted, over-the-top finale.

The Haunting also falls short with its most primal requirement -- it's hardly scary. In truth, there is one, quick, sublime moment of shock, but that's hardly enough to call a movie frightening.

Instead, the movie offers unintentional moments of laughter, especially when the mansion's caretakers show up (Bruce Dern and Marion Seldes). Nearly catatonic with fear, they refuse to stay at the house after dark and spout lines that sound like outtakes from Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.

Director De Bont brought far more life to an L.A. bus in Speed and a tornado in Twister. I guess he couldn't figure a way to make a house go 80 mph.

My advice: Rent the Robert Wise original film, because, once again, a good movie has been reduced to a mediocre remake. Wouldn't it be great if someday Hollywood would take a lousy old movie and make a great new version?