Robert Wise's The Haunting is a masterclass in horror when the real terror isn't on the screen...it's in your head.
In celebration of Halloween, we are counting down the days with 13 of the scariest, creepiest, or simply unforgettably grim horror movies that ever crawled under our skin and never left. Join us each day as we look back on 13 horror movies that still know how to trick and treat viewers to their nightmares. Enter Suspiria…
“Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there…walked alone.” That famous line says all you have to know about The Haunting, the 1963 film from director Robert Wise that was based on Shirley Jackson’s masterpiece of a novel, The Haunting of Hill House. Just as Jackson’s tale balanced on an unsettling edge of ambiguity, Wise’s movie never once shows you a leering ghost or protoplasmic monster (for that, you can seek out the abysmal 1999 remake). It’s all done with stillness, shadows, the occasional sound and the sense that something is lurking around the corner or in the dark…something so unspeakable that not seeing it is almost worse than seeing it.
The plot is simple and direct: paranormal investigator John Markway (Richard Johnson), psychics Theodora (Claire Bloom) and Eleanor “Nell” Lance (Julie Harris) and current owner Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn) arrive at the 90-year-old, notoriously spirit-infested Hill House to document any possible supernatural phenomena that might occur. Once there, they are all subjected to a psychological assault of some kind, but is it merely in their heads? The key may lie with the emotionally unstable Nell, whose fierce desire to escape from her bleak life could make her a target for whatever does walk the halls of Hill House.
From start to finish, The Haunting is a textbook example of how to use the power of suggestion to frighten the hell out of the viewer. I’m getting goosebumps now just thinking of the scene where booming footsteps are heard coming closer to a door, the door itself finally bulging away from what is on the other side of it -- which we never see. The brilliant use of black and white cinematography and oppressive framing of the house around the characters creates a pervasive sense of darkness -- psychic or otherwise -- seeping into the frame. The characters themselves are fully fleshed out, with Julie Harris fantastic as an emotionally stunted woman who wants to experience some kind of life even though it’s clear that her chance has long passed her by.
Much is explained about the terrible history of Hill House, but we are never given a definitive motivation or identity for whatever may exist there. That makes the story even more terrifying; there’s no reasoning with the forces at work in Hill House -- it may simply be that the house itself is just “born bad,” as Markway so memorably puts it. That’s what makes The Haunting still the supreme example of the haunted house film (despite heavy competition from the likes of The Shining and The Legend of Hell House), and one of the greatest horror films of all time. Everything that happens at Hill House happens just out of sight, and in the end, there’s no way to rationalize it. Some places are just born bad. And you can’t do anything about it.
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