My parents took me to Disney World in Florida in 1976 for the first time when I was eleven and there was a ride called 'The Haunted Mansion'. You sit in one of those carnival cars and ride through a simulated haunted house and as you do so, a tricky light show makes you believe that you are seeing ghosts everywhere. At one point you even pass by a mirror and it seems that a ghost is sitting between you and your companion. That five minute ride was more entertaining than this film.

      In 'The Haunting', it's tag line is...SOME HOUSES ARE BORN BAD. Maybe they knew when they had their finished project that it was such an abysmal accomplishment, they decided to blame it on the house where most of the setting takes place. : - ) You could also make the argument that the film is entirely disrespectful to anyone who loves horror movies.

      Lili Taylor plays Eleanor Vance, a woman who took care of her mother for the last eleven years before the sick woman died. After her death, mom left her property to her other daughter who seemingly did nothing to serve her mother in her final years and she and her husband want Eleanor out of the house. Eleanor's sister and husband are horrid people who are materialistic, cut throat and devious.

      Eleanor answers an ad in the paper that will pay her nine hundred dollars per week (she needs the money now that she's homeless) where a doctor (Liam Neeson) needs people to fill a study depicting the effects and causes of insomnia. Others who answer the ad are a trendy babe named Theodora (Catherine Zeta Jones), a woman who aches to be a fashion victim and brags about her huge spending habits and is every credit card's nightmare. Last there is Luke (Owen Wilson), a character that is completely wasted as we never get to know anything about him or who he really is.

      The wasted cast gather at an old mansion with a sinister past, its former owner more than a century ago employed children in a sweat shop operation and their abuse led to their deaths and the house is supposedly haunted with their troubled souls. The characters find that instead of being studied for their insomnia, they are tricked into be studied for the effects of fear that plays upon them. There is a mythological explanation of the house's history and what the religious overtones are meant to be and the film looks like a cross between a rare bad episode of 'The X-Files' and out takes from the achievement a first year film student. The entire film spends too much time building up its climax and when it's supposed to pay off here and there, it relies too much on convincing the audience that special effects will work better than the story and this is a major miscalculation.

      The fate of the characters in the film's last act is the true testament as to just how bad this film is. You can always judge a good or bad film by how much you care about what happens to the major players. You won't care a bit about anything when this film is over. It looks more like an instructional film shown to upcoming film technicians on how to use special effects than it does an actual motion picture with any redeeming qualities. A shocking disappointment, especially coming from Dreamworks, started and owned in part by Steven Spielberg!

Walter Frith, 1999