Make time for a classic!

It’s honestly a shame I made time for the 1999 remake of The Haunting back in the day but hadn’t gotten around to seeing the original until now.

Unlike the open penchant for cheap jump scares that renders the 1999 version borderline idiotic, the 1963 original version is the kind of movie that thrives on the power of suggestion—on a chilly atmosphere conjured by slamming doors, ghostly murmurs (imagined or not), and shadows that seem to move just out of frame. If anything, it’s the anti-jump scare horror film: not an exercise in shock, but a sustained spiral into unease.

But, even if I liked and appreciated this movie, I can’t say I loved it. Maybe it’s just that I’m too in love with The Innocents, the 1961 masterpiece that delivered its psychological dread with an elegance and subtlety that few horror films—The Haunting included—can match. Where The Innocents whispered its terrors, The Haunting occasionally feels a little too eager to let you hear them, a little too insistent in its sense of psychological unravelling. That’s particularly true of Eleanor, whose mental fragility forms the heart of the film’s true horror, but whose descent is made less compelling by a performance that leans a bit too heavily on the theatrical side. I felt for her, yes, but only from a distance. You do get the message that Eleanor’s breakdown is the true horror here, a tragedy unfolding in real time, intensified by a haunted house that may or may not even be haunted. After all, the ghosts inside our heads are often scarier than anything else, and it’s in those moments of psychological fragility that The Haunting finds its power. But I needed a different type of performance for it to fully resonate with me.

Visually, this movie is a black-and-white stunner. Robert Wise’s use of varied techniques, deep focus, unique camera placements and movement, not to mention the beautifully composed frames, transform Hill House into a place that seems to breathe, to twist around its inhabitants and taunt them.

Even if Eleanor’s melodrama doesn’t quite connect, even if the scares are a little too polite for their own good, it’s hard to deny how effectively The Haunting does what it sets out to do. But let’s be honest, if Vincent Price had played Dr. Markway, I’d probably give this five stars without a second thought—you know I’m a little Price bitch, and this haunted house could’ve used a little more devilish charm.