The Haunting Review

Take a step forward into the atmosphere of films that would provide an eerie and uncomfortably brief backdrop to an establishing shot of a character asleep in front of a television. The Haunting would be the film on that screen, switched off almost immediately by a character stirred from their sleep. They would wake up somewhere around the opening narration, stirring from their sleep as Robert Wise’s masterclass comes to life. Then they’d switch it off and subsequently be bumped off or interacted with by another character. It has all the charms of the early gothic genre, something The Haunting is keen to stay true to with its adaptation of the Shirley Jackson classic. A genre horror through and through, to take the chilling simplicity of its horror is the correct course of action.

Allure and intrigue are at the very core of The Haunting, which displays a love for its deeply-rooted genre tropes and burns the horrors ever-so-slowly, ever-so brilliantly. Essential atmospheric work is dragged out by the usual run of wild leading performances. Characters are driven by emotional overreaction rather than thought-out proceedings. Julie Harris gets the lion’s share of these great moments, an angry and anxious woman who cannot understand the wider picture in the first act. Eleanor Vance’s (Harris) desire to escape is matched only by the fascination displayed by John Markway (Richard Johnson) and his exploration of the haunted tropes and ghosts inside the home.

Whether they exist or not was the real crux of fascination, and whether it is mused on all that much or not is never the issue. It is always a present fascination, an issue not of belief but of atmosphere. Ghostly apparitions are not as scary when shown as they are when implied. Ruminating fears are over the belief of what lies beyond the door, rather than that of what is actually present. Wise knows that. His tensions lie not in the abnormal or paranormal but in the breakdown of willpower. Intense and exciting shot choreography makes up the bulk of The Haunting, whose location and isolation are just as important as the great performances throughout. Dialogue be damned, even if Jackson’s work is adapted well at times in narration-clad moments, it is the atmosphere that matters most.

Essential horror, a near-masterpiece of pace and tone. Stylish too. The Haunting is Wise at his very best, at his most sinister. Shock value is reliant on musical cues and essential framing choices that see floored cameras edged closer to the horrors of death within the house. Symmetrical haunts of innovative designs and powerful imagery, the broad strokes of Wise’s quality work here provide an essential understanding of the original text and enough room for unique flair too. The unnecessary burden of fear is carried by these characters with weighty effects. Harris, Johnson and Russ Tamblyn all conform to that fear of the unknown, which Wise presents as the natural state of worry. Rightly so. That fear of the unknown marked Jackson’s original text as a force to be reckoned with, and Wise implements the horrors of visualisation in an eerie, paranormal piece.