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House On Haunted Hill [2000]


RRP: £13.99
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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

House on Haunted Hill is one of the new breed of waste-no-time thrill machines, like Deep Blue Sea, and a particularly effective example at that. The plot is pure contrivance: For a party stunt, a wealthy amusement-park manufacturer (Geoffrey Rush) offers five people a million dollars if they spend the night in a former insane asylum where the patients murdered the sadistic staff. But it turns out the five people who arrive aren't the five he invited--did his wife (Famke Janssen), who hates him, make the switch? From there events unfold with a smart combination of human and supernatural machinations; spooky jolts are dispensed at regular, but not entirely predictable, intervals. The visual effects owe a considerable debt to Jacob's Ladder, a much more ambitious movie; House on Haunted Hill just wants to get under your skin, and succeeds more than you'd expect. Rush is his entertainingly hammy self; Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter and Bridgette Wilson are attractive and reasonably straight-faced about it all; and Chris Kattan is genuinely funny as the house's neurotic owner. Some elements of the plot seem to have been lost in the editing process, but it hardly matters. More bothersome is that the scares go flat when computer effects take over at the end--the digital images just aren't as creepy as the more suggestive stuff that came before. But that's just the very end; most of the movie has a lot of momentum. Watch until the end of the credits for a final bit of eeriness. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com


A VERY VERY AVERAGE SO CALLED REMAKE!!
Review date: 2008-06-07 Rating: 2 out of 10

Bought this when I saw it cheap after about the first 10 minutes you know you have cocked up and should have kept your money in your pocket. This is total crap the acting and so called story is below average I really thought this would be good but it was a big let down. The blood and gore is quite tame so if you like your horrors with a bit more of a bite I would advise you to stay clear of this. If you enjoy your films which is mostly in the dark and limited scares and gore this is for you. I recently watched the second film Return To House On Haunted Hill and that was a slightly better but don't expect to much because you won't find it with either film.

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Reviews


"B CLASS" TRASH - IGNORE THE FAVE REVIEWS IF YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHAT MAKES A GOOD MOVIE
Review date: 2008-03-22 Rating: 2 out of 10

After the first 5 minutes you know you've rented a dud, it's nonsense, it's crass it's well....boring.

Low budget and it shows - avoid if you have taste and want to be entertained.

One of my fav films
Review date: 2008-01-14 Rating: 10 out of 10

This is one of my favourite films ever. I decided to watch it because I saw it on the TV schedule but accidently missed it so I rented it which was a rip off costing me £4 when I could buy the DVD for £5. I thought it was amazing especially the bit at the beginning at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. I have been on that Hulk ride which was called Terror Incognita in the film which was really good to relate to. I love all the actors and actresses in the film and think that the storyline is really good. All in all I think that this is a great film which stands out from other Horror movies and is #1.

An excellent remake....
Review date: 2007-12-30 Rating: 8 out of 10

I usually steer clear of remakes, especially in this case as I love the orginal, but this film really is a great film. Its more of a re-telling than a straight remake, not sure about the dodgy Vincent Price impersonator though.

A CREEPY FILM
Review date: 2007-11-03 Rating: 8 out of 10

In 1931, the Vanacutt Psychiatric Institute was the scene of a violent takeover by the criminals inside. Today, it serves as the House on Haunted Hill, and after seeing a television special on it, Evelyn, (Famke Janssen) the wife of illustrious Amusement Park designer Steven Price, (Geoffrey Rush) decides to hold her birthday party there. When the guests arrive, Jennifer Jensen, (Ali Larter) Donald Blackburn, (Peter Gallagher) Eddie Baker, (Taye Diggs) Melissa Marr, (Brigitte Wilson) are taken up to the house by Pritchett, (Chris Kattan) the owner. Steven tells the guests that the house is rigged for them to spend the night trapped inside, and the only way out is to survive until morning. With the only way out in the cellar, the group splits up, with Jennifer and Eddie going into the basement with Steven and Pritchett and the others staying put. After several incidents make the guests suspicious of one another, more clues are revealed about the true intentions of the party list and why the house seems alive.

The Good News: As is usual with these types of movies, the house is the best part. It's back-story, about the house being an insane asylum, allows it to have a simple explanation to blame for the events that transpire. Even though it has an unlikely scenario, the fact that it doesn't try to use a cliché as a way of letting the ghosts reek havoc in the house is a nice touch. The havoc that they reap is more psychological as well, as there are so few deaths in the film that it makes them be more interested in scaring them. Characters would enter a room talking to someone, then there would be some strange noise off in the distance, they would turn around and no one was around. One of the classics is Jennifer wandering into a room looking for Eddie, and she sees him jump into a giant vat of blood, and she goes over and tries to pull him out. He reappears in the room asking her what's wrong, then something inside the vat nearly pulls Jennifer into the vat. A classic example of the ghosts merely reeking havoc. The ghosts themselves are so rarely seen that we never get much of a good look at them, and it follows the great tradition of films like "The Haunting" where the ghosts are off-screen and we see only their attempts to drive the guests mad. We get lights coming on with no one around to flick them on, noises that come from machines off in the distance, and the eeriness of the walls within the house are combined to make the atmosphere really unnerving. It doesn't have to have the ghosts in there a lot to be creepy. One of the only times we see the ghosts is also a classic scare: one of the characters is wandering around videotaping the house when they stumble upon a strange room. Wielding the camera up, on the video display is a group of ghosts performing surgery on another ghost, which is the opening scene of the movie. Moving the camera away reveals nothing in the room, and they do it again, and we see the ghosts appear on the display once again, then they look at the camera, and their faces are so distorted and the look they have sends chills down your spine. They do have some killing instincts, and the killings are pretty graphic. We get two decapitations, a very violent electrocution, and one person turned into stone and blown into pieces by a gust of wind. Hardly any of it is seen, but the giant pools of blood seen at the scene of the crime are pretty gory.

The Bad News: A lot of people criticize this one for it's gaping plot holes, and granted some of them are pretty easy to spot. One of the most obvious, that the ghosts can actually hack onto a computer system miles away from the house and changing the list, is very ridiculous and was the only scene where I felt insulted at the lack of respect for the audience. There are others, but that was the only one I couldn't live with. I also hoped that Chris Kattan would be killed off soon into the movie, as he is even more annoying than anything post-SNL. It was a sad shame that he wasn't.

The Final Verdict: Aside from Chris Kattan's OTT performance and some gaping plot holes, this isn't that bad of a movie. It faithfully adapts some of the more memorable parts from original (sadly, the scene where the woman pops up isn't here) but it doesn't need knowledge of the original to be entertaining. If you can live with the plot holes, this isn't a bad one to pick up.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Taye Diggs
Geoffrey Rush
Chris Kattan
Famke Janssen
Peter Gallagher

Creators:
Geoffrey Rush (Primary Contributor)
Famke Janssen (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
EAN: 7321900180184
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2000-08-14
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 89 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1999-10-29
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)

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