Showing posts with label shirley jackson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shirley jackson. Show all posts

Oct 20, 2020

THE HAUNTING (1999)

I blame Mike Flanagan and his brilliant adaptation, The Haunting of Hill House, for how unimpressively 1999’s The Haunting plays in our modern era. Though both are based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, ironically, it’s the miniseries which strays far from the novel’s surface story that’s the most successful adaptation, whereas The Haunting, though sticking very close to its source material (until the stupid finale), totally dismisses Jackson’s moral – the implications of loneliness, the dangers of isolation, and the emotional damage inflicted by the inability to feel “part” of something – in favor of lame spookshow spectacle, lame third-act twists, and Owen Wilson. The Haunting didn’t enjoy high marks upon its release in theaters what feels like a hundred years ago, but it’s one of those perfectly reasonable titles to touch base with from time to time for some superficial popcorn entertainment – one of those late-‘90s relics which hails from that moment in cinetime where CGI was just starting to become front and center in large-scale genre filmmaking. There’s 1997’s Mimic and Spawn, 1998’s Deep Rising and Species II, and 1999 had so many examples that it would be obnoxious to list them all, but let’s take a quick stroll down Memory Lane with Deep Blue Sea, The Mummy, End of Days, and House on Haunted Hill. There are a reckless number of examples from this era where studios spent over a hundred million dollars on horror productions, and mostly because of their visual effects. This approach didn’t result in any good movies, but it did result in some fun ones, and for some audiences, that’s enough.

Because of this ‘90s CGI explosion, this era’s offerings all look, feel, and sound the same – 9-0-C-G-I might as well be its own zip code in Hollywood because of how hilariously primitive and concretely tied to an era its films look when compared to some of the visual achievements pulled off by the recent likes of War for the Planet of the Apes or The Jungle Book. This was the biggest complaint with The Haunting way back when, and that complaint not only remains valid, but it’s actually much more relevant because of how far CGI has come – this alongside the mini revisionist renaissance we’ve seen and enjoyed regarding the rebirth of our favorite horror properties, which had long succumbed to near self-parody, now rebranded as serious and mature storytelling. NBC’s Hannibal rescued Hannibal Lecter from the ho-humness of Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising, purging Anthony Hopkins’ increasingly toothless take on the title character; 2018’s Halloween wiped away 40 years of baggage-filled sequels and made Michael Myers scary, mysterious, and motiveless once again; and Mike Flanagan went back to the most famous haunted house story in the land to create something beautifully terrifying and terrifyingly beautiful. (Its follow-up, The Haunting Of Bly Manor, is streaming now on Netflix.)

If you’re familiar with Robert Wise’s adaptation of The Haunting from 1963, then you know his approach was built on a foundation of suspense first and terror later – without ever falling back on a single visual effect. Spooky offscreen noises, ominous pounding on oaken double-doors, and the creepy insinuation that the other living occupants of the house weren’t to be trusted – these are what made The Haunting so frightening. It’s tempting to dismiss this no-frills approach to genre filmmaking in the modern era, considering all the horror flicks that have since come down the path that relied heavily on visual imagery – The Exorcist, Suspiria, right up to the modern era with The Conjuring (also starring Lili Taylor) or Hereditary – but 1999’s The Haunting never had enough faith in itself to rein in some of the stupid CGI in lieu of the fantastic production design of the house itself and the character dynamics that still (somewhat) contained enough ambiguously sinister behavior that suggested not everyone had Nell’s best interests at heart.

Ultimately, it’s for these reasons that The Haunting fails to leave any kind of lasting impression: the distillation of the characters as presented in the novel, and the overreliance on (poor) CGI instead of trying to establish a mood and tone, are enough to keep The Haunting from being, at the very least, a sturdy addition to the haunted house sub-genre. For the most part, screenwriter David Self (Road To Perdition) preserves the novel’s character archetypes with commendable loyalty: Lili Taylor’s Nell is an outcast, ostracized and belittled by her sister (Virginia Madsen) and brother-in-law, and desperate to forge her own path in the world. Liam Neeson’s Dr. Marrow seems well meaning and genuinely motivated by good doctorly intentions, even if his “sleep study” is a manipulation that eventually leads to a situation he can’t control. Catherine Zeta-Jones maintains Theodora’s passive aggressive flirtations and socialite-like flamboyance, although her open bisexuality, which had been left purposely ambiguous in Jackson’s story (a surprising addition for the 1950s) is just as broad and obvious as the rest of her character. Lastly, there’s Owen Wilson, ably playing Luke the California mimbo, exorcised of his implied substance addict canon and his ties to the owners of Hill House that would’ve threatened to make him an interesting character. (I still remember our theater’s audience laughing every time Owen Wilson was on screen, even when he wasn’t vying for comedy relief.) Ironically, in concept, everyone is perfectly cast to capture their characters as presented in the novel: Neeson is esteemed and trustworthy, Zeta-Jones is airy and free-spirited, Wilson is fun-loving and free of responsibility, and Taylor is lost, lonely, and wanting nothing but to be accepted. The groundwork is there, but for whatever reason, the film can’t seem to lure the performers’ take on the characters across the finish line. The ensemble’s performances are fairly mundane with most of the cast not going out of their way to overextend themselves for a project that, in their estimation, didn’t call for it, despite this being one of Steven Spielberg’s earliest producing credits through his brand new Dreamworks Entertainment banner. Zeta-Jones’ Theo comes off as a teenaged girl, rattling off some of the film’s most bone-headed dialogue, especially as she refers to her boots as “savage kicks,” and poor Taylor does her best during the final act when she’s forced to spew the kind of confrontational dialogue that’s directed at the house’s main threat but is actually provided solely so the audience knows what the hell is happening in the very movie they’ve been watching for the last eighty minutes. If one of cinema’s Ten Commandments was Thou shall not have characters speak aloud unto themselves for the betterment of observers’ understanding, The Haunting would be the most blasphemous of them all.

Everything else aside, there remains the most important question for a horror film, especially a haunted house horror film: is it scary? Well, you guessed it: no. It’s not. In fact, except for the demise of Wilson’s character, in what remains one of the dumbest kill scenes in horror history, The Haunting is so neutered that its PG-13 rating almost feels like an insult to kids twelve and under. I guess we can blame Spielberg, who apparently hated the movie and had his name removed, for the inadvertent overblown spectacle, as he chose Jan de Bont, cinematographer-turned-director known for his previous unsubtle action-adventure hits Speed and Twister (and not-at-all-a-hit Speed 2: Cruise Control), to direct the update of a classic flick known for its low-key subtlety. That de Bont had never before (or since) directed a horror flick could certainly point in the direction of his hiring being a mistake, but to date, he only has five directorial credits, with a mere two of them enjoying solid reviews and healthy box office. (His last credit as a director was the awkwardly titled Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life waaay back in 2003.) While The Haunting does have a fair bit to boast about, mainly Jerry Goldsmith’s flourishing musical score, gorgeous production design, and Hill House’s foreboding façade (the opening flyover shot of the house complemented by sounds of massive and weathered preternatural breathing sets a tone that the rest of the film fails to live up to), they’re all soon upstaged by some embarrassingly dodgy CGI, as if the movie didn’t have enough faith in itself to rely solely on its intricately designed environments to captivate audiences. In 1963, Wise paid a grip to knock loudly on the other side of some bedroom doors. In 1999, Spielberg paid a visual effects team millions of dollars to turn a bedroom into an ominous face, complete with bloodshot window-eyes and a bed that sprouts spider-like legs. The first is scary, the second is not. High on visuals, low on creativity: that’s late-‘90s genre in a nutshell.

Neither time nor advances in approaches to classic material have been kind to The Haunting, which, even putting aside the CGI, very much feels like a ‘90s production, dated by its look, feel, and some accidentally hilarious moments like when Neeson reassures his sleep study group that, in case of emergencies, he has his “trusty cell telephone.” Old school audiences enjoyed the novel and the subsequent adaptation that came along four years later. Brand new audiences well acquainted with elongated storytelling as essayed by services like Netflix and HBO found much more substance to enjoy with 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House. This leaves 1999’s The Haunting lost entirely in no man’s land – not nearly frightening enough to command attention, nor “deep” enough to reach the audience’s hearts through its characters, The Haunting is just kind of there – a harmless but mediocre slice of popcorn entertainment that doesn’t come close to haunting its viewers.

Aug 4, 2020

SWALLOWED WHOLE BY A MONSTER


"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

Oct 16, 2019

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (2018)


I’ve been following director Mike Flanagan’s career ever since his debut, Absentia, was quietly released to video following a successful film festival run. I’d been so eager to see it that I’d messaged him on Facebook to inquire where I could find it and he’d politely responded. Now look at him: in less than eight years, he’s matriculated from a kind fellow answering Facebook inquiries to landing the gig of making a sorta-sequel to The Shining, one of the greatest and most intimidating horror films of all time. (He is also still politely answering questions, this time on Twitter.) Following the release of Absentia, Flanagan has remained loyal to the horror genre, writing and directing the haunted mirror flick Oculus, the criminally underseen sequel, Ouija: Origin Of Evil, the similarly criminally underseen horror fairy tale, Before I Wake, and Netflix originals Hush and the Stephen King adaptation Gerald’s Game. Flanagan has yet to make a horror film that’s not been at the very least engaging, with nearly all of them being frightening in some manner, and in different ways. (Ouija: Origin Of Evil is legitimately spooky, and if you’ve been ignoring it because the first Ouija is so terrible, I don't blame you, but please rectify that immediately.)

Though Flanagan is still early on in his career, I’m tempted to call The Haunting of Hill House his masterpiece. While it heavily revises the source 1959 novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson, which was previously adapted for 1963's moody classic The Haunting and 1998's overblown update of the same name, all the characters from the novel appear in the new take, though rewritten to be members of the same family (one of them named after the novelist herself). Instead of a group of volunteers gathering in the infamous Hill house to take part in a study on the paranormal, those volunteers are now siblings growing up under the guidance of their romantic, dreamy parents (Henry Thomas and Carla Gugino), who have somehow turned the concept of flipping houses into an admirable, artistic act. Hill house is just their latest endeavor, and a huge financial risk, but if all goes well with the restoration, it will be the last house they ever flip, and they can finally build their own “forever home” to live out the rest of their days. Soon, the ghosts of the house begin to victimize them all, especially setting their sights on the emotionally unwell Olivia (Gugino), pushing her to a mental breaking point and permanently altering the family dynamic.


Spread out over ten, approximately one-hour episodes (several of those appearing as extended director’s cuts exclusively on the new Blu-ray release), The Haunting of Hill House is a magnificent piece of filmmaking—one intent on positioning horror and human emotion side by side, in the same way the Crain family lives side by side with the varied ghosts of Hill house. The series is honest about many human issues, some of them taboo topics trapped in the constant debate of everyday news cycles—chief among them, depression and mental illness. Because of this, The Haunting of Hill House is a brutal gut punch in many ways, and one of the Crain siblings, Steven (Michiel Huisman, Game of Thrones), lays out in one of the opening scenes what a ghost actually is: “A memory, a daydream, a secret. Grief, anger, guilt. But, in my experience, most times they're just what we want to see. Most times, a ghost is a wish.” That right there is the foundation on which The Haunting of Hill House has been erected. Along with the typical, spooky-faced specters, all of those things—grief, anger, guilt—bleed through every episode, haunting our characters in different, meaningful ways. (Each of the characters also represent the different stages of the grieving process, and their specific episodes appear in that same order.) Though Flanagan has drastically changed Jackson’s story structure, he remains firmly true to the intent of her novel. The haunted house exists in the background, but the story itself is about Nell (Victoria Pedretti), her unhappiness, her inability to fit in, and that being surrounded by people who don’t understand her, and who dismiss her struggles and feelings of isolation, leads to her ruin. This is the crux of the show, so it’s no surprise that the siblings’ relationships to each other serve as the emotional center; the back-and-forth timeline technique juxtaposes their child and adult counterparts, and the prologue scenes will break your heart once you begin to suspect how badly things will go for the Crain family.

In many ways, The Haunting of Hill House is a Rorschach test. If you’re in it solely for the horror, you won’t be disappointed; there are numerous moments that will give you serious, earned chills, and you’ll have fun trying to spot all the background ghosts hidden throughout the show (there are a lot). Meanwhile, if you’re more interested in the drama, you’ll get that too, and if you truly invest in the characters and manage to relate to any one of them, you’ll find yourself in tears. And if you want both, I can’t think of a single piece of genre filmmaking in recent memory that’s gone anywhere as close to offering and achieving those combined sensibilities. You will bring out of The Haunting of Hill House exactly what you put into it—like the mysterious Red Room itself. 


It’s a bold claim, but for my money, The Haunting of Hill House is the best thing Netflix has ever done (I’ll certainly say that “Two Storms” is one of the greatest episodes of any television show—ever), and it’s touched many of its viewers in different ways. For as long as I’ve delved into films and television as a means for exploring artistic expression, I’ve been hearing people say, “Such and such changed my life,” and for years I wrote that off as a clichéd, bullshit expression that didn’t mean anything—a haughtier but equally vague way of saying something was “amazing.” Following my now multiple viewings of The Haunting of Hill House, I finally understand what those people were saying. Its many themes about life, its ruminations on death, and the way it presents real struggles of people both ordinary and extraordinary have resonated with me in a profound way, and I can honestly say The Haunting of Hill House has changed my life. 

Thankfully, Flanagan has found a nice and comfy home at Netflix headquarters, with all kinds of upcoming projects in the pipeline, chief among them The Haunting of Bly Manor, a spiritual sequel to The Haunting of Hill House, based on the novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James—another tale of children growing up in a haunted house. Here's hoping their collaboration continues long into the future, because based on what we've seen so far, the end result is always smart, honest, and emotional horror. We could use more of that.


[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]