The Haunting (1963)

Plot Outline: A group of people stay in a supposedly haunted house in order to prove the existence of ghosts. But they got more than they bargain for when they find out it is haunted.

The Review: It's been heralded as one of the scariest films of all time. Cinema critics love it. The audience is spooked by it. But in all honesty, WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT! This absolute drivel is one of the worst films I've ever seen. People who say this is one of the scariest films of all time really must be pussies. They must scream at the sound of someone slamming a door or jump because they see cold breath. And you get plenty of that here. People have made much of the fact that the less you see, the more scared you become. Yes that is true for the most (Jaws and Alien are good examples). But you still have to have something happen! You can't just sit back and think "Well this is a haunted house so let's not do anything at all and then people will be scared!" which is what the people who made this must be thinking. Things "happen" such as a character who thinks she was holding the hand of another character, only to wake up in the morning and find she was next door all night - but is this scary? I'm sorry but I just can't get chills thinking about something like that. I have to actually see something, even something brief, in order for me to get goose bumps. You may call me shallow for not trying to visualise it but I could think of hundreds of things in relation to that scene which wouldn't scare me. Sound plays a big part of the film and like Hideo Nakata did with Dark Water and Ring, director Robert Wise tries to use sound to scare. Footsteps, big crashes and doorknobs creaking around are all used here and they are effective but that's about the only thing that works here.

Final Verdict: This film scared me only because I realised I'd wasted my Sunday night watching this crap on TCM. When you've seen shock horrors such as Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you can never look at weak stuff like this in the same way again. I must be the only person to absolutely hate this film but I don't care.

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