House on Haunted Hill (Warner Bros., R)
Starring Famke Janssen, Geoffrey Rush and Taye Diggs
Rating:
One star - I find the mansion on the hill in the Travelling Wilburies' "Tweeter and the Monkeyman" much scarier.
In the spirit of Halloween, the people behind "House on Haunted Hill" scored the coup of being one of the only new movies out there to "treat" movie-goers. Here's hoping those that saw the film this weekend were not inflicted irreversible harm.
The movie is a remake of a film made in 1958 of the same name starring Vincent Price. The updated version stars Rush as Steven Rush, a slimy businessman in the business of "spooky" amusement parks nationwide.
As a gift to his wife (Janssen), Price arranges for a birthday party to be held in an odd-looking building that a "Unsolved Mysteries" knockoff (yes, it is possible) claims is haunted. He makes out a guest list, but while he is away from the computer, someone or something changes the list.
Five guests are invited to the shindig, although none of them really know who the party is for. Rush then makes the lucrative announcement that anyone who can make it through the night will win on million dollars.
One million dollars does not grow on trees, even ones next to evil houses. The house is extremely made because its property value decreased last year. No, evidently it was home to a psychiatric ward for the criminally insane. The ward mistreated the patients with all kinds of freaky tools of psychiatric destruction and a rebellion against the doctors left dozens dead with their souls trapped in the house.
Each of the characters commits the cardinal sin to go off and explore either on their own or in a twosome that always seems to separate. Didn't Scream kill off these cliches? One by one, each of the characters bite the dust in an attempt to confuse the viewer as to who is really behind the madness, although it really was never a question.
One of the main problems in this movie is the character's fault in what our greedy heroes are up against. Do people really have a chance against pure evil? In other horror movies that work, the evil antagonist at least has a weakness that smart characters can exploit to find a way out. The structure here leads to a "Oh, you are not going to believe how they get out of this one" ending that leaves viewers truly horrified at the plot faux pas.
Another problem is the movie really will not scare a good majority of horror fans. One might even say that the scariest part was the preview for Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow."
All of the psychology about being scared is replaces with a low-road gross-out line of storytelling. The blood runs thicker than Peter Gallager's eyebrows, but who cares when the characters are just bodies to count at the end of the film?
Robert Bucksbaum, a movie analyst for Reel Source, Inc., told the Associated Press that "House on Haunted Hill" was "the perfect movie for the Halloween weekend." They must have forgotten to send out the memo declaring Halloween weekend the dumping ground for cinematic crap.
Originally published in the 11/4/99 edition of the Northern Star.
My home, sweet home page
The Northern Star Home Page
The Internet Movie Database
What other critics think - The Rotten Tomatoes Site