"The House on Haunted Hill" is a goofy, extremely cheesy horror movie that is small on real horror and big on the kind of scares caused by things jumping out from the side of the camera. That made it less scary for me than it might for some people; while I found "The Blair Witch Project" surprisingly frightening because of it's realism, this movie got more laughs and knowing smirks from me than fear. That's not always a bad thing. There is warm spot in my heart for movies like these, which know how shallow and silly they are and aren't afraid to show it.
The movie's setup is pretty simple. Geoffrey Rush plays a wealthy amusement park developer who is willing to stoop to any cheap trick for a scare (named Price in a tip-of-the-hat to the late, great Vincent Price, who starred in the 1954 original). I liked the sardonic tone with which Rush plays his character (when asked if a phone call was business or pleasure, he snaps "Neither, it was my wife.") He has a love/hate relationship with his wife, who wants to throw a birthday party for herself in an old asylum that's built into a towering cliff overlooking the ocean. I've never seen an institution built like this, but never mind; it provides a opportunity to show the visitors winding their way up a needlessly twisty driveway as lightning crashes overhead.
We know from the opening shots that the institution was the scene of an inferno that claimed the lives of 55 people, including the inmates and a mad doctor that performed gory experiments on his patients. Now the asylum has been converted into a house by its new owners, both of whom died under mysterious circumstances. Price's wife wants to throw her party here for its spooky atmosphere. But her guest list is switched at the last minute, and the four guests that turn up are strangers to her. It should not come as a surprise that none of the guests were selected by accident. They are joined by the son of the deceased owner, a flighty sort of guy who jumps at every creak the house makes. Price has thrown in a twist as well: each of them will receive one million dollars, cash, if they stay the whole night in the house.
This is all just an excuse to get the seven characters locked in the house for the night so they can be picked off one by one. It didn't matter much to me who lived or who died, since they are all more or less interchangeable. I enjoyed the banter between the Prices, and the resignation of the new owner to his impending death. He informs the others ominously that the house is alive, and that it wants to kill them all. I chuckled then, wondering why, if that was the case, he had held onto it for so long. But then he wouldn't have been there to come up with the brilliant plan to go into the basement and turn off the controls for the lockdown mechanism.
The characters behave exactly as horror movie characters always do, which is to say, in the stupidest way imaginable. Although it is suggested repeatedly that they should stick together, we know that they'll wander off into that basement more than once and far more than necessary, so that ghostly figures can lead them astray and ghastly creatures can tear them limb from limb. They follow the horror movie textbook, falling apart in a crisis and getting into petty disputes, and then scheming against each other.
The movie updates the special effects of the original, of course; today's audiences are not likely to be easily impressed by creepy skeletons and things that go bump in the night. The special effects are clearly computer generated, but not very impressive. There is one scene in which the floor seems to explode upward for no apparent reason, except to give the characters something to run away from. The gore level is pretty high, but not terribly realistic.
In the end what carries the movie is its goofy charm. It contains all the elements of a Vincent Price horrorfest, and that is pretty much what it strives to be. On that level, I could appreciate it. Its not very long (96 minutes) but could have been trimmed even more and seemed less tiresome in parts. Watching it was like eating popcorn: no nutritional value whatsoever, kind of light and airy, with a taste that fades within minutes after consuming.
The movie's setup is pretty simple. Geoffrey Rush plays a wealthy amusement park developer who is willing to stoop to any cheap trick for a scare (named Price in a tip-of-the-hat to the late, great Vincent Price, who starred in the 1954 original). I liked the sardonic tone with which Rush plays his character (when asked if a phone call was business or pleasure, he snaps "Neither, it was my wife.") He has a love/hate relationship with his wife, who wants to throw a birthday party for herself in an old asylum that's built into a towering cliff overlooking the ocean. I've never seen an institution built like this, but never mind; it provides a opportunity to show the visitors winding their way up a needlessly twisty driveway as lightning crashes overhead.
We know from the opening shots that the institution was the scene of an inferno that claimed the lives of 55 people, including the inmates and a mad doctor that performed gory experiments on his patients. Now the asylum has been converted into a house by its new owners, both of whom died under mysterious circumstances. Price's wife wants to throw her party here for its spooky atmosphere. But her guest list is switched at the last minute, and the four guests that turn up are strangers to her. It should not come as a surprise that none of the guests were selected by accident. They are joined by the son of the deceased owner, a flighty sort of guy who jumps at every creak the house makes. Price has thrown in a twist as well: each of them will receive one million dollars, cash, if they stay the whole night in the house.
This is all just an excuse to get the seven characters locked in the house for the night so they can be picked off one by one. It didn't matter much to me who lived or who died, since they are all more or less interchangeable. I enjoyed the banter between the Prices, and the resignation of the new owner to his impending death. He informs the others ominously that the house is alive, and that it wants to kill them all. I chuckled then, wondering why, if that was the case, he had held onto it for so long. But then he wouldn't have been there to come up with the brilliant plan to go into the basement and turn off the controls for the lockdown mechanism.
The characters behave exactly as horror movie characters always do, which is to say, in the stupidest way imaginable. Although it is suggested repeatedly that they should stick together, we know that they'll wander off into that basement more than once and far more than necessary, so that ghostly figures can lead them astray and ghastly creatures can tear them limb from limb. They follow the horror movie textbook, falling apart in a crisis and getting into petty disputes, and then scheming against each other.
The movie updates the special effects of the original, of course; today's audiences are not likely to be easily impressed by creepy skeletons and things that go bump in the night. The special effects are clearly computer generated, but not very impressive. There is one scene in which the floor seems to explode upward for no apparent reason, except to give the characters something to run away from. The gore level is pretty high, but not terribly realistic.
In the end what carries the movie is its goofy charm. It contains all the elements of a Vincent Price horrorfest, and that is pretty much what it strives to be. On that level, I could appreciate it. Its not very long (96 minutes) but could have been trimmed even more and seemed less tiresome in parts. Watching it was like eating popcorn: no nutritional value whatsoever, kind of light and airy, with a taste that fades within minutes after consuming.