The Haunting

Based on Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting follows Richard Johnson’s John Markway as he and three volunteers (Julie Harris’ Eleanor, Claire Bloom’s Theodora, and Russ Tamblyn’s Luke) set out to establish whether or not an infamously creepy house is haunted. Filmmaker Robert Wise, working from Nelson Gidding’s screenplay, delivers an often astonishingly stylish endeavor that opens with a tremendous amount of promise, as The Haunting boasts a first act that effectively establishes the spooky origins of said house and the uniformly distinctive protagonists – with, in terms of the latter, the movie benefiting from its assortment of compelling, sympathetic central characters. (This is especially true of Harris’ increasingly tragic figure, to be sure.) And although the picture is chock-a-block with jaw-dropping instances of black-and-white cinematography, The Haunting eventually moves into a static midsection that grows less and less interesting as time progresses – as Wise places a predominant emphasis on the heroes’ meandering, less-than-captivating exploits within the house. The visually-appealing yet uninvolving atmosphere does, as a result, ensure that the climactic occurrences are hardly able to pack the engrossing punch Wise has obviously intended, which ultimately cements The Haunting‘s place as an almost passable adaptation of an exceedingly awful book (and it goes without saying, certainly, that the film fares much, much better than the nigh unwatchable 1999 movie).

** out of ****

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