House on Haunted Hill, by Leslie Adams, was given 1 star from 4
Hollywood has got
a real problem with this movie, doubling up trend that has been going on for a few
years. First it was Volcanoes, then comets, then CGI bugs, then gangster comedies,
now haunted houses. Over the summer was a movie called, The Haunting, now in the
following fall comes, House On Haunted Hill. This movie has basically the same theme
accept it is brain dead in its dialogue, confused in it's own plot, and has a haunted
house that is cursed for the dumbest reason. I gave The Haunting a bad review, and
this movie is way worse than The Haunting.
The movie stars Geoffrey Rush, as Steven Price, a millionaire who pays a few guests to stay in a, supposedly, haunted house for the night. The fee, 1 million dollars each, and if one of them dies, their fee gets divided amongst the living. The house used to be an old, insane asylum, but it became the sight of a mass murder, followed by several fires. After the fires the place was condemned, and considered haunted.
Steven Price is the owner of a chain of amusement parks, and he specializes in creating terror. At the beginning of the movie there is a thrilling sequence in which he dupes his guests into a terror trap. It is really quite something. He hears about this haunted house, and decides to setup traps, and fake ghosts in order to scare a small party of people. Little does he know the house is actually haunted and a group of money grubbing saps, that he lured, get stuck inside. The group consists of Peter Gallagher, Bridgett Wilson, Ali Larter, Taye Diggs and Chris Kattan. They are all at their lowest here.
The
Haunting was essentially a psychological thriller, House On Haunted Hill goes more for the
horror genre. It is a very gruesome movie. The gore level is up there with the
most gruesome of horror films, and the death count is high.
The story line is essentially nothing more than an excuse to put these dumb ass characters, into a house, in order to get killed by special effects and scream in the darkness. But this plot is particularly dumb, in terms of it's bluntness, and obvious stupidity. This millionaire pays these people to stay in the house for his own amusement. Then we are told, through some muttering diologue that, the house is alive. Seems like something you don't forget to mention. Then we are thrown into a familiar situation, where each character is killed off one by one, until the final two or three, find a way to escape. Wow, how creative.
In The Haunting, the spirit that haunted the house, had a reason to haunt the house, I won't say what but it was more interesting that the motive, the spirit in this house had. Truth is, he didn't have one. He just liked to kill people I guess. That or the spirit was in on the joke with Price. As stupid as that sounds, it probably would of made for a good comedy at least, instead of a boring horror flick.
The storyline in this film is a confusing mess. They try to mix in the, setup terror sub-plot, with the murder mystery sub-plot, with a betrayal sub-plot, with a haunted house sub-plot. By the end of the film I didn't care about any of them. All I wanted was for the house to kill everyone, that would of been a surprise and probably worth your ten dollars, because it is a break out of the formula.
The acting in this film is worse than usual. It is a special kind of bad that only comes along every once in a while. Usually bad films at least have so solid performances. Not this film, it is like a go for broke, bad film. The worst is by Chris Kattan. He was just so annoying every time he was on the screen. And don't ask about any of the character development, or character backgrounds, because there weren't any. They just said, "we aren't even going to attempt it this time, lets just add the special effects in, and make a movie!!".
The movie is really bad, but it has some rare moments that were creepy, and some of the atmosphere was setup nicley. But those elements were overshadowed by suck an idiotic plot, mind numbing acting and a confusing story line. Looking at this movie I realized that The Haunting became just a little bit better, still not enough to make me recommend it, but this movie makes The Haunting more appealing to me, and hopefully anybody who visits the cinema.
Cast:
Steven Price: Geoffrey Rush
Evelyn Price: Famke Janssen
Eddie: Taye Diggs
Sarah Wolfe: Ali Larter
Melissa Marr: Bridgette Wilson
Dr. Blackburn: Peter Gallagher
Watson Pritchett: Chris Kattan
Directed by William Malone
Rated R: Gory violence, coarse language, brief nudity.
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