House on Haunted Hill
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs
Writer: Dick Beebe
Director: William Malone
Synopsis:
It's party time! Again! Millionaire amusement park developer Stephen Price receives a phone call from his wife who hates him about a Halloween birthday party she wishes to have and wants him to make it happen. She has a list of people that she wants to attend. Well, since he kinda hates her too, he says fuck her invitations, comes up with his own invites and sends out the email. Well, the party is to be held at an abandoned lunatic asylum. Back in the 1930's, a doctor went mad there; patients got loose one night and killed the staff. The mad doctor locked the place down and a fire started, killing almost everyone. Like the original, anybody that stays will receive a check, but since we're in 1999 here, it's $1,000,000. Also once again, if anybody dies, the money gets divided up between survivors. Anyway, the place is evil, so it says fuck Price's invitations, modifies his email and sends out its own invites. Crazy shit ensues.
Rant:
I have to give some credit where it's deserved; William Malone's (Feardotcom) remake remains pretty damn faithful to William Castle's 1959 B-Movie blast... for a while, at least. There's a lot of the same elements here, truly. I mean, you got the drive up to the house with all the invitees in separate cars, you got the more than strained relationship between Stephen and Evelyn Price (wait... their names in the original were Frederick and Annabelle Loren. But whatever, they are relatively the same characters, and their last name here is a nod to the late great Vincent Price, so I'm down), you got Watson Pritchett's (the last name was originally Pritchard, changed for no apparent reason) drunken terrified of everything shenanigans, and you got multiple twists that leave you with not knowing who is doing what. It's cool, as far as all that goes. There's actually a bit more references to the original that I'll be bringing up during this review.
I'm not someone that hates remakes by default. And I actually appreciate when a remake goes its own way in an attempt to bring something new to the table, while still keeping some sort of relevance to the source. Most remakes are pointless enough as is, but shot for shot shit is the fucking worst (i.e. Psycho). Sure, add some elements, some direct dialog, some nods, but do something different. That way, even if you end up sucking I will give you props for effort. But there is also such a thing as taking things too far, and I feel like House on Haunted Hill does just that. I'll also go into this during the review.
The look of the film is great, but sometimes the “less is more” approach is much appreciated. There's an awesome stop-motion type title sequence that leads us into a flashback sequence of all the crazy shit that went on in this asylum back in the 30's. This is all done in hyper quick flash editing that works at first, but once it's used in multiple areas it becomes fucking nauseating. Not like “I think I'm gonna be sick” nauseating, but “this is fucking lame” nauseating. Sorry, but every once in a while I would like to see this shit that's zipping across the screen trying to produce scares, because otherwise I can't figure out what the fuck it is that's supposed to be scaring me. There are some cool camera shots, though, I'll give it that.
You gotta have balls to take on a mimic role of one that Vincent Price portrayed oh so excellently. Props to Geoffrey Rush for pulling it off and actually managing to do it the entire time in a respective manner, by looks and personality. The dude kills. Famke Janssen could have just walked in and said “Hi, I look school teacher hot and have a bitchy personality in this film” and that would have been enough for me. Great googly moogly, I love her, especially in a role like this. But she actually does more. Janssen and Rush together totally chime in to the whole hatred relationship that Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart put across so well in the original. It's amped up, but some of the same dialog is used and other things occur to give more indication that these two hate the fuck out of each other. It worked. Chris Kattan is surprisingly more witty than I ever would have expected, but some shit happens with his character that I fucking hated. I'll elaborate later. Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Peter Gallagher and Bridgette Wilson round out the cast, and everybody is okay, but no one stands out quite like Rush and Janssen.
K.N.B on SFX. 'Nuff said, really, but I'll mention a little. For what there is, the gore looks great, of course. You get multiple pencils through one dude's neck, a completely hollowed out face, real looking body parts, especially a head, some cool looking ghost freaks (that aren't shown nearly enough), and that's about it. Oh, and a CGI hallway that has a teeth chomping mouth towards the finale. The teeth chomping thing actually looks pretty good.
Things I liked:
****Spoilers****
- An early on moment where the Universal Hulk roller coaster is shown as a horror ride that faux derails and depicts a failing elevator journey up to the top. First time I rode that coaster, it scared the piss outta me and the POV sequences here do a pretty good job of helping relive that moment.
- When Melissa Margaret Marr (played by Bridgette Wilson), an ex TV personality, goes down in the depths of this place with her video camera, she comes to a room with an operating table. Through her camera, she can see a past event surgery going on, but when she looks up, nothing is there. I thought that shit was genius, and captured pretty damn effectively.
- During a twist moment, we find out that Mrs. Price isn't dead but is in fact in cahoots with Dr. Vannacutt --much like Annabelle was in bed with Dr. Trent in the original. Well, she goes all N.W.O. on this poor mother fucker and stabs the shit out of him multiple times with a scalpel. He falls to the floor with his life drifting away and the last thing he sees is Mrs. Price staring at him. It's just her face in the center of blackness, getting smaller and smaller. Pretty genius.
- The mini coffins containing firearms. A great nod to the original, and this time, said mini coffins are inside of a smoke filled life size coffin.
Things I hated:
****Spoilers****
- Jeffrey Combs being wasted in a minor character role. It sucks, because said character plays an important part in the sinister matters at hand. Unfortunately, we see him about three times; one in a flashback scene, one in Melissa Marr's camera and one on a surveillance monitor. Having Combs in a cameo is fine, but give the guy some fucking dialog! He's a genius, and just showcasing him through a monitor while he's doing all that hyper fast shaky shit that's trying to convey that he's an evil spirit is lame.
- This coexists with the #2 thing I liked. As I mentioned, I loved the effect of seeing some harsh past tense shit from the view of Melissa's camera, and then she turns around and sees some fucked up looking ghost in the darkness down the hallway. I was down with it. Then, it goes to this cut frame editing of the specter moving up to her swiftly, she starts screaming and the next thing we see is a gang bang of sequences that depict what I am guessing are shots of more crazy shit that went on in this asylum. Eh, did nothing for me. We don't even see how she died. We see the aftermath later on, but that wasn't enough for me.
- The twist of why the house/asylum itself hacked into Price's computer and invited all these people. I should make this two different entries, because the fact that the house itself can computer hack fucking made me laugh. I appreciate that we do in fact find out that the place is haunted; we didn't in the first one, and I do prefer that, but I did like the attempt of evading monotony. Anyway, the other reason I hated this is that these people were chosen because they were related to staff members that perished in the asylum when all the serious shit went down. Maybe it's lame to hate this. Maybe it's actually cool, I just didn't think so. I honestly didn't need a reason as to why they were invited, and would have preferred that Price had just said “fuck my wife's invites, I'm bringing my own peeps” like Loren did in the original.
- The Darkness. All this insane malevolence that the house possesses comes down to some horrible ass 'made in high school circa 1992 TV productions class' looking CGI shit. Give me a fucking break. Also, when it kills Watson Pritchett's (Kattan) character and goes creeping down a flight of stairs, I swear to Satan that it sounds like his soul screams “Mortal Kombat!”
- This one put the last nail in the coffin for me. I hate that a single moment killed my overall opinion of this remake being okay, but it did. A fucking kinder, gentler, ghost of Chris Kattan comes back to save the day. Fuck you. That's all I can say.
- Actually, I can say more, because it gets worse. As if it weren't enough that Kattan ghost came back to help the two survivors escape the asylum of carnage, once they make it outside they discover an envelope containing all the million dollar prize checks. Was the fact that they made it out alive not happy enough? Once again, fuck you.
What the fuck moment:
****spoilers****
---Ali Larter's character's real name is Sara Wolfe, though she introduces herself as Jennifer Jenzen. She doesn't tell anybody her real name, at least not that I remember. She tries to tell Eddie (Taye Diggs), but it's in a scene where they are walking around in dark hallways and get split up. So, actually, the only thing that knows her name is the house. However, there is a scene towards the end where she thiks she hears Melissa calling out for help and she calls back to her referring to herself as Sara. Melissa would not even know who the fuck Sara was, so even if it were really Melissa calling out to her, she would likely be hesitant to respond.---
Anyway, this marks my second time viewing the remake, and most definitely my last. I doubt I will ever brave through the DTV sequel, as I doubt it supports any improvement. I'm not gonna tell everyone to avoid Malone's House on Haunted Hill, and I gotta admit I liked certain aspects, but there are those moments that killed the entire picture for me. I can't help it; that ending really fucking did me in.
