The Haunting : Why do people find this movie scary?

I like the movie, but it was rather uneventful. I liked the character interactions and the cinematography. I loved the different camera angles and closeup shots. However, I did not feel any sense of claustrophobia.

Great director, great source material, great performances. And it was made in that PSYCHO/TwilightZone/JFK/ColdWar era which really was almost the end of the world, and "creepy" was staggeringly easy to do on both the big and small screens.


It's always notable to me how much the ornithologic assault on Tippi Hedren in the attic room near the end of THE BIRDS feels like Janet Leigh's shower scene in PSYCHO, while the nocturnal bird attack in Jesica Tandy's house feels like the visitation in Claire Bloom's room in THE HAUNTING (also 1963).



LBJ's mistress on JFK:

I agree with everything you said. It was fun. It was spooky and it was creepy creepy. But I didn't find it scary. The novel by the goddess eternal, Shirley Jackson, is wonderful.


I thought I was gonna die! - Roseanne Roseannadanna

I saw this a few years back in a large theater in Glendale and still found that it hadn't lost any of its edge. Maybe all that darkness in the theater, the quiet parts, the booming, are intensified in such a surrounding.

Or maybe it's just that I saw the film when it was released (I was very young) and it terrified me and that trauma still resonates.

It's my #1.

And you're right about that little novel, almost a novelette. It wasn't until I read The Shining that I found a book nearly as unnerving.

No fate but what we make. -Terminator II

Have you ever seen "The Innocents"? I first saw that movie when I was a full grown adult and I use that word loosely and "The Innocents" is deeply, deeply terrifying. "The Innocents" is my all time favorite scary movie. Because everything grows in the imagination.

I thought I was gonna die! - Roseanne Roseannadanna

Arguably, the two best ghost/haunted house movies were made during the early-'60s, THE INNOCENTS and THE HAUNTING. (Although 1943's THE UNINVITED and 2001's THE OTHERS deserve acknowledgement).

THE INNOCENTS benefits from marvelous direction and incredibly atmospheric B&W direction, but to me it always feels like a series of brilliantly-realized macabre cinematic vignettes strung together. While I find THE HAUNTING's narrative holds together better.

But both are brilliant.

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Have you ever seen "The Innocents"? I first saw that movie when I was a full grown adult and I use that word loosely and "The Innocents" is deeply, deeply terrifying. "The Innocents" is my all time favorite scary movie. Because everything grows in the imagination.

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Oh yes If my #1 is The Haunting, my #2 is The Innocents. A good attempt is The Changeling (which came out at about the same time as Kubrick's The Shining - 1980 - and revived my faith in good psychological horror films with a heart.)

Again, I saw The Innocents around the same time as The Haunting (I liked horror films, even as a small child, and my older sister, out of misplaced sibling comradery took this tiny kid to those two films and other REALLY inappropriate ones) and residual childhood trauma probably has a lot to do with my reaction.

However, I still thank her for introducing me to some true masterpieces.


No fate but what we make. -Terminator II

I have watched "The Innocents" a number of times over the decades, and even though I think it's a fine film in its own right, it never really left much of an impression on me in the same way "The Haunting" did (and still does!)

However, I did thoroughly enjoy "The Others" with Nicole Kidman. Probably not quite so subtle as the first two examples, but some of the scenes were disturbing/eerie; just like the wallpaper impression, and the "holding hands" scenes in The Haunting, for example.







When is old news gonna be old news?
Arnold Vinick (The West Wing)

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I have watched "The Innocents" a number of times over the decades, and even though I think it's a fine film in its own right, it never really left much of an impression on me in the same way "The Haunting" did (and still does!)

However, I did thoroughly enjoy "The Others" with Nicole Kidman. Probably not quite so subtle as the first two examples, but some of the scenes were disturbing/eerie; just like the wallpaper impression, and the "holding hands" scenes in The Haunting, for example.

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Precisely right.

THE INNOCENTS is an achievement in macabre style, but THE HAUNTING goes deeper and gets inside one's head.

And while both films have shrill leading ladies, Julia Harris' seems like the shrillness of the character (as does Nicole Kidman's), while Deborah Kerr's seems like the shrillness of an actress being a bit actress-y.

The Others borrows (whole cloth) from both The Innocents and The Haunting, as well as many other horror standards, to good effect - with that little unexpected jump (concerning a portrait?) in one shot that got the audience screaming, added.

The Innocents did a lot with silence and that stark B/W. Dead silence in a large, dark movie theater has its own creepiness factor.

We have a physical therapist who works on a floor above us and one piece of equipment can only be heard banging rhythmically in the echoey stairwell. The sound never has failed to take me back to The Haunting - almost sixty years later. THAT'S an impression.

No fate but what we make. -Terminator II

Oh, there's no question THE OTHERS borrows from other movies. Most movies do and have to.

The question though is quality of execution that's what distinguishes films with a similar premise.

The last 30 minutes of the movie were really good. I started to become unnerved by the loud banging on the door and the movements it made. Also, the part when Grace appeared in that trap door made me yelp, then once more at the end as Eleanor was driving away and saw Grace run behind the tree. Unfortunately, up until then, I found it difficult at times to care about the movie.