The Haunting

Directed by: Jan de Bont

Written by: David Self (screenplay); Shirley Jackson (novel)










Going back down memory lane in my attempt to bring myself back to writing about film regularly, I found The Haunting available for streaming and realized that this would be a great place to continue.

The Haunting stands as one of the first "scary" movies I saw in the theater. Before watching it again, though, I was struggling to remember what exactly the movie was about. I vaguely remembered something about a scientist and a massive house, but nothing stood out about what exactly was at the core of the story. I also recalled the movie not being terribly scary. Still, it was a milestone movie in my personal history.

Watching it again, it was obvious to me why I didn't think it was very scary; it wasn't. But what I missed in my youthful hope for jump-moments and scares was how incredibly creepy the movie feels. The house is physically imposing and menacing. The layout of the rooms is confusing and maze-like, mildly echoing the Overlook hotel of The Shining in this way. The ornate carvings and statues are disquieting, at least in part because some of them don't seem to belong together. In one room there are barbed spikes decorating a bed's headboard and spiderweb-like glass windows,  but also cherubic children's faces around the fireplace. (Also, did the expressions of the children's faces change between shots? Early on, it's hard to tell, which adds to the sense dis-ease.)

Aside from Lili Taylor, most of the acting is screen chewing. (Or, maybe that's just the way Owen Wilson really is?) Liam Neeson is especially guilty of this in this movie, never feeling like he's doing anything beyond reading lines in a corny horror movie. At no point does the audience have any reason to accept him as a scientist of any kind, much less the kind that could pull off setting up an experiment of the type we're supposed to accept as the opening premise. (This accusation may be more indicative of the flaws in the script rather than his acting.)

The story itself works just fine, but drags itself down with a few too many unnecessary twists and turns. Some of these twists work within the confines of the story, but others are awkwardly forced and contrived, merely serving as pretext to the next twist. Although Lili Taylor's character adds to the story significantly (she's the crux of one of the major turns in the story), the other characters fall back into filler material with little or no distinguishing personality. For long stretches of the movie, Catherine Zeta-Jones seems merely there to give Lili Taylor someone to have dialogue with about the creepy house. Usually having too many characters becomes a flaw in a movie like this, as most of them never develop beyond a vague outline of a human being, but in this film a few more distinct personalities could have helped.

What this movie lacks in script and acting and gore (at least, for a horror movie), it makes up for in the outstanding eerie ambiance. The dark beauty of the house gives chills and discomfort. Other haunted house movies should take note of how well this film reaches the goal of making the house feel haunted just by its mere existence.

Midnight in Paris

Written and Directed by: Woody Allen

To many critics, Woody Allen has lost his touch recently. To those critics, Woody Allen throws this film straight back in their face.

Gil (Owen Wilson) is a writer, on vacation in Paris with his fiance, who has a nostalgia for the creative renaissance that took place in the 1920s. On a late night walk, he somehow stumbles into the past, running into such expatriates as F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll). He falls in love with a French muse in the 1920s - who, herself, is in love with a different past - and strains to maintain a life in both time periods Eventually, he has to make a choice...

The film itself is not very long, but that is a testament to Allen's crisp and efficient filmmaking. There is nothing irrelevant in the movie and it doesn't try to be any more than it actually is. It is a simple story of a man trying to live in the present while also idealizing the past. Granted there are some surreal factors which need to be accepted to advance the story and the historical figures are generally reduced to caricatures, but the interactions between the contemporary characters is spot-on realistic without being dramatic.

To classify this film as a comedy is to reduce it to the simplest factor. It has dramatic moments, and the central inter-character conflict is between Gil and his romanticism against his fiance and her desire for something more. Exaggeration aside, the story is almost Shakespearean as a comedy - there's a serious central conflict, moments of humor, and nobody dies at the end. In most Shakespearean comedies, the characters must exit the city and head "into the woods" - a surreal distortion of society - to learn about themselves, and in this film Owen Wilson leaves the present and moves into his idealized distortion of the past. All exaggeration aside, the film is Shakespearean in its style.

The performances of the actors are all spot-on. Owen Wilson manages to portray the typical "Woody Allen" character well without falling into cheap imitation. He exudes all the mannerisms and eccentricities while also making the character his own. The actor who stole the show, though, was Corey Stoll as Hemingway. He spoke like Hemingway's prose and not-so-subtly showed the manly-man Hemingway persona. His speech about "making love to a good woman" is one of the best monologues in quite a while.

I highly recommend this movie. It's sweet, fun, romantic, and light, while also being an example of great filmmaking.