I love a good haunted-house movie that eschews violence and gore for psychological terror ("The Changeling," I think, is an excellent example of the genre) but "The Haunting" falls short in this respect. It is a well-crafted film, especially with regard to the Caligari-like camera-work, but I found myself more involved in the richly appointed sets and imaginative score than I did in the story and its characters. Nell's constant inner-monologue voice-overs not only grew tiresome as the movie wore on, but also looked like a substitute for good screen writing and character development. It was as though she were providing footnotes to the audience so they knew what she was thinking. This may have been OK in the early sixties but now simply seems dated and quaint. The same can be said for the entire Freudian/Elektra-complex/lesbian subplot, which now provokes knowing titters the same way similar themes do in Hitchcock's "Psycho" and "Marnie" (which, however, remain far better and more watchable films). The few scares there were in the movie fell far short of compensating for these defects. Overall the film makes for quite a boring two hours, though it does have an undeniable historical interest.
Review of The Haunting
