August 1, 1999 -- There's a really spectacular house which serves as great setting for a spooky ghost story, "The Haunting." Harlaxton Manor in England stands in for the exterior shots, while the interior was built in "The Dome" in Long Beach, California, formerly the home of the "Spruce Goose," a monstrous plane built by Howard Hughes. It's too bad the script isn't as good as the set design.

Production designer Eugenio Zanetti did such a great job of building the interior, I thought it was a real house. It wasn't until I read information about the set design on a web page (there's a link to it below) did I find out the whole thing was fabricated for this film. The sets are fantastic and fascinating.

Unfortunately, the story is a slow-paced, meandering, depressing mess, that fails to frighten or to pull the viewer into this nightmare world it is tries in vain to create. Instead, what we have is a fantastic stage, a series of pretty good special effects and a group of good actors trying to sell the audience on an unconvincing story. Most of the characters are so unappealing you'd like to see the house gobble them up as quickly as possible.

Only one performance stands out. That of Lili Taylor ("Ransom," "Short Cuts") who plays the fragile, sensitive Eleanor Lance, one of a handful of research subjects summoned to the evil Hill House by the Machiavellian Dr. Jeffrey Marrow (Liam Neeson of "The Phantom Menace"). Morrow wants to conduct a research experiment on Lance and the others to see their reaction to fear. He tells them, however, the test has to do with insomnia, not fear.

Of course it turns out the house is haunted and the lives of everyone in it are in danger. Only the fact that Morrow and the others are incredibly slow to pick up on this fact and that they are utterly inept in the art of escape keeps the story going at all. Taylor, however, does an outstanding job of portraying both fear and determination. Her battle with a stone Griffin is one of the few memorable parts of the movie. As good as she is, however, she can't carry the whole film on her small shoulders. She could have used some help. You would think that Catherine Zeta-Jones ("Entrapment"), who plays one of the other subjects of the experiment would have helped, but she disappears without a trace into the murkiness of the plot.

I think the reason the plot doesn't work is the script by David Self fails to properly set up the story. Anybody that has heard ghost stories around the campfire knows that the verbal, not the visual part of the story is what makes a ghost story effective. It captures the imagination and it is the imagination which does the work of scaring you. In this movie, we don't find out the real story of what really happened at Hill House until the end, so there is no real set up.

I don't believe I have seen the original film, and I haven't read the novel by Shirley Jackson on which both of these films are based, but the original had to have been better than this. This film reminded me of "The Legend of Hell House," which I did see and I also read the book. In my opinion, it was a superior film to this one, despite the lack of the elaborate sets and special effects, and the unbelievable plot. The latest incarnation of "The Haunting" rates a D.

Click here for links to places to buy this movie in video and/or DVD format, the soundtrack, books, even used videos, games and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.