When it comes to remakes 1999’s cheesy HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL ranks as one of the more entertaining ones. Giving his best Vincent Price, distinguished actor Geoffrey Rush stars as theme park king, Stephen Price (get it?), who invites five guests to the abandoned cliff-side Vannacutt Institute for the Criminally Insane for his venomous wife’s (Famke Janssen) birthday party. Price offers the guests $1 million if they can survive the night inside the maze-like structure and retrofits the place with tricks and pranks, unaware that the place is actually haunted by the demented Dr. Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs) and his patients who died from his hideous experiments.
Director William Malone (Feardotcom) doesn’t shy away from the ghosts and ghouls that William Castle hinted at in the 1959 original, with the film offering up several creep monster FX, including one of the first of the fast-moving, head-shaking ghost that has become almost a staple in most of today’s haunted house flicks. The plot is complete hokum but the cast has fun with the material, especially Janssen and Rush who seem to relish going at each other’s throats.
At first sight, 2009’s handsomely photographed THE UNINVITED sounds like a retelling of the classic Ray Milland film of the same title from 1944, but is in fact a remake of an overrated 2003 South Korean movie called A Tale of Two Sisters. After being institutionalized for a suicide attempt, teenager Anna (Emily Browning) goes back home to find her father (David Strathairn) has become romantically involved with her deceased mother’s nurse, Rachel (Elizabeth Banks). While Anna and her sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), try to figure out the mysterious fire that killed their sick mother, Anna begins seeing ghostly visions and questioning not only Rachel’s true motivations but also her own sanity.
While the film looks great and its beautiful Maine setting could be a character itself, the screenplay is littered with too many red herrings and relies too heavily on Anna’s “is it real?” psychosis. The film also builds up a false narrative and presents a twist ending that is neither convincing nor credible. Banks gives a cold, tense performance as the “wicked stepmother” but Browning, whose shoulders the entire story rests on, is vacant and unsympathetic.
A superior ghost tale is the 2000 Robert Zemeckis-helmed WHAT LIES BENEATH. Michelle Pfeiffer is perfectly cast as Claire, a mother who a year after surviving a car accident comes to believe her newly renovated lake-side home is haunted. At first she thinks it might be the ghost of the missing wife of her brutish new neighbor (James Remar), but when things intensify Claire realizes her husband, Norman (Harrison Ford), may be connected.
While not perfect, What Lies Beneath is a terrific example of visual storytelling. The plot isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but Zemeckis wisely presents it with an obvious love and understand of classic filmmaking, especially in the tradition of Hitchcock. The film unfolds as a mystery and slowly builds the tension, keeping you on your toes almost the whole time. Pfeiffer is extremely likable and warm, and her scenes with best friend Diana Scarwid are some of the strongest in the movie. And unlike a lesser movie like The Uninvited, What Lies Beneath doesn’t rely on a wobbly narrative that barely supports a “shock” ending, but instead cares more about strong characters and a simple but effective premise. House on Haunted Hill: B The Uninvited: C– What Lies Beneath: B+