Daisoujou’s review published on Letterboxd:
To think this almost didn't even make my list. I was worried The Haunting would be too dry, the way I feel about quite a few films that, on the surface, look similar. This was only exacerbated by me misunderstanding the premise and expecting to have loads of my time wasted by waffling on about how the supernatural can't be real. Turns out, the researcher here isn't the tut-tuting skeptical type, he's just as keen to experience some spooky shit as I am. And let me tell you, spooky shit, we did indeed experience.
I don't know how to say this without it sounding like empty gushing, but there is so much talent from every angle here. This movie is properly tense, scary even, while only suggesting the supernatural. The film's most direct, and perhaps only visible attack, is the exact sort of thing many movies would start with. Yet it's almost too much to bear in this context. I can't even begin to pinpoint the moment when I stopped thinking the lead character was too jumpy over nothing, or that the film was toothless for making its threats simple feelings the characters were declaring. That's the real magic of it; it eases you in the same way a promising ghostly expedition welcomes the house's new residents, and before you know it, you're in too deep. It proceeds to surround you, getting more and more suffocating. So much of this is communicated through sound design, endlessly creative camera angles and movements, and even just the lighting of scenes. It's a movie that becomes so much more than the sum of its parts by paying careful attention to every little element of filmmaking, edited to keep such a steady, ever-building pace.
Even the characters are rather interesting, likely owning to its origin as a book (which I sadly have not read). There is a lot of depth to the protagonist especially, a woman desperate to take back control of her life and find something she can attach meaning to, seemingly clinging too desperately to the first things she comes across. We don't explore the other three inhabitants as deeply, but each brings their own desires and varied attitudes to the whole project, and they play nicely off her conflicted mental states. It's nice in such a film to see (very, very strongly) implied lesbianism handled well, too.
This is, as of now, easily the standout film for Hooptober so far.
