Hoop tober No. 2 #8

Watched with my parents.

This is another case of a classic where it's taken me a long time to get around to actually watching it because I felt as though I already knew what it would be like. That's partly due to having read the novel (it's by Shirley Jackson, and it's amazing!) and having read and reread Stephen King's discussion of it in Danse Macabre. He wrote: "In a very real way, in spite of the fine acting, fine direction, and the marvelous black-and-white photography of David Boulton, what we have in the Wise film... is one of the world's few radio horror movies." He was talking about the way that, deep in the core of the genre, it's the evolutionary function of horror movies to show us horrible things, but The Haunting is really in the business of implying horrible things. Just as in a radio drama, the audience's imagination is absolutely crucial to the whole enterprise.

This may be why, in her 1964 essay "Are Movies Going to Pieces?" Pauline Kael described a part of the audience taking offense at the film at the screening she attended: "[not] merely bored, it was hostile — as if the movie, by assuming interests they didn't have, made them feel resentful or inferior." Kael also noted that overall the film made less than a fifth of what The Birds made. There was something old-fashioned about the movie even in 1963 — perhaps a function of Wise having been directing movies for nearly 20 years already. At the same time, as moviegoers have collectively experienced 50 years' worth of filmmakers striving to outdo Hitchcock's violent sensationalism, and imitators of Robert Wise's solid, sober craftsmanship are almost unheard-of, The Haunting's reputation is stronger than ever. I picked it for this year's Hoop tober, even though (as with Halloween) I felt I was probably too familiar with it already to really be swept away, because it's one of Final Girl's favorites and one of Martin Scorcese's.

Indeed, I ired the film more than I got carried away or scared by it. But it's hugely irable. Though I found the heavy-handed musical score a burden, and the use of voiceover struck me as awkward, overall the use of sound in the movie is magnificent. There's a particularly terrifying scene where all the terror is generated by noises coming through the wall, combined with some flaws in the pattern of the wall that look eerily like a face. Whereas a movie like Baskin throws a lot of (glistening, squelchy) shit at the viewer just to see what sticks, Wise makes every move with care and without wastage. You have to work with this movie, but you get out of it everything you put in. There's a wonderful artistry to that, and it's a rare pleasure.

Also, it's the rare movie that is truly scary and was rated 'G' when it was first released. Impending movie night with the kids for sure.

P.S. The Self-Styled Siren on The Haunting as an adaptation of the novel specifically.