The Haunting

Robert Wise's 1963 horror classic (itself based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House) gets a retooling by Speed director Jan de Bont, who trades the edgy, eerie moodiness of the unknown for grandiloquent, Poltergeist-esque FX. The result is unintentional camp and some of the worst character motivation in recent film. Liam Neeson is the behavioral scientist who invites a trio of test subjects -- Lili Taylor as the virginal introvert with spiritual connectivity, Catherine Zeta-Jones as a sassy, bisexual body painter, and Owen Wilson as the group's over-analyzing, wisecracking clown -- to a retreat at Hill House, a sprawling gothic mansion in the New England countryside. Neeson claims to be doing insomnia research; actually he's out to examine the primordial essence of fear, but his manufactured psychological ploys take a back seat when the cavernous mansion comes to life. The ornate statues of children, demons, and griffins play parts of their own, the set designs are ingeniously opulent, and there's plenty of nifty camera work, but other than that, the admirable cast is awash in a horror show of inane dialogue and flaccid suspense -- even the hokum of The Amityville Horror had more bite.

-- Tom Meek