The Haunting, 1999
“Welcome to Hill House, everyone.”
Spook Factor: 👻👻 out of 👻👻👻👻👻
I give this movie 2 out of 5 ghosts because of the mild jump scares and gorgeous details that help instill fear in the audience. While this movie has several jump scares, most of them are fairly mild and serve only to keep the audience on their toes rather than to create a super startling experience. The setting of the story does more for the overall feeling of terror than most of the paranormal phenomena that the characters experience, but the later half of the movie provides more action-oriented terror and thrilling sequences to get your heart pounding and spine tingling.
CWs: mentions of child death and stillbirth, implied child abuse, blood, mention of suicide, paranormal phenomenon (including apparitions and disembodied voices), human skeletal remains, unethical psychological experimentation, decapitation, mild gore
OWs: bisexuality, polyamory, mild language
Jump Scares (in chronological order):
Nell walks down the curved hallway to open doors on her right
Theo expresses sadness for the children
Mary (an assistant) explains how she feels about Hill House
Luke in a hallway after Nell goes to bed
Nell’s doorknob starts to turn
Nell continues working on her maze
Luke and the doctor close the metal door
Nell digs through the ashes
Nell tries to open the locked door
“Oh God, it’s looking for me.”
Luke tries to crash the gates
Luke is dragged to the fireplace
What to Expect:
“Welcome to Hill House, everyone.” This unique take on Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House is, at its core, an exploration of fear and how it motivates, infects, and can be conquered. The film opens with a woman in fear of losing her apartment. Dr. Marrow (Liam Neeson) fears losing his position because of the questionable ethics of his latest experiment. His study masquerades as a sleep study for insomniacs and opens the gates - literally within the first 5 minutes - to a whole new world of fear in the antiquated mansion.
While watching this for the nth time, I couldn’t help but marvel at the set design. The mansion itself is monstrously large, and its contents reflect the overwhelming size of the estate. The entire place has an air of foreboding and grander-than-thou elegance that towers over the inhabitants both figuratively and literally. Seemingly 20-ft ceilings, oversized artworks, and thickly decorated walls and furnishings add layer after layer of macabre decadence. Everything about the manor is extravagantly intimidating - a perfect environment for the doctor’s fear experiment. While watching this film, pay attention to the work that the designers and crew put into the set: the height of the doorways and ceilings, the color schemes and textures of the interior, the facial expressions on sculptures and paintings. Each scowl, each fold of velvet, each ornate carving compounds the terror. Could you imagine this same film being set in a post-modern minimalist apartment?
When studying horror in a gothic literature class in college, a classmate asked why so many horror stories are set in creepy old mansions and decrepit estates in gray, gloomy weather. Our professor answered perfectly: How better can one set the scene for horror? How else can you subtly influence the audience and steer them into the terror that the characters are also feeling? Hill House is almost an exaggeration of these features. Even during the day, we never see direct sunlight once the characters have entered the mansion, and their explorations of the estate only builds their - and our - terror. The doctor and his subjects become tiny, fragile rats in a gothic maze where terror lies behind closed doors and around every turn.
