title: “Ghost In The Machine” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-20” author: “William Woodcock”
The terrified trio consists of Lili Taylor (in the mother-dominated Julie Harris role), Catherine Zeta-Jones (as a sexually ambiguous jet-setter) and the amusingly quirky Owen Wilson (as the group skeptic). Keeping admirably straight faces, they must undergo an elaborate trial-by-special effects in this expensive-looking horror movie, which turns the original’s scare strategy on its head. Where Wise worked by suggestion, never showing the spirits haunting Hill House, De Bont and his visual-effects team adopt a more-is-more philosophy. Doors turn into giant hands, walls sway, ceilings attack, statuary comes alive and the angry ghost of the house’s dead patriarch rages around the mansion like a cyclone in De Bont’s “Twister.” It’s all very impressive–and counterproductive. The more the computer-generated images take over, the sillier “The Haunting” gets. By the end, the computers have chased all the scares away.
Where the no-budget “The Blair Witch Project” shows how you can make something out of next to nothing–a camera, a forest, a few actors–the best-that-money-can-buy technology of “The Haunting” shows how little you can make of too much.
The Haunting.DreamWorks. Opens nationwide.
