House On Haunted Hill (1999)
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher
Director: William Malone
Synopsis: Splashy remake no better than the original
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

Modernized, CGI-ed, sleeker, louder, brasher, big budget, special effects driven and all that. Problem is, it may be an all tweaked, jazzed up version of the original yet it still doesn't manage to encapture or improve upon the spirit of the campy William Castle original in anyway at all.

After Psycho, Carrie 2, Anna and the King, 101 Dalmatians and now this, its high time Hollywood realized that simply recycling and regurgitating old material doesn't mean that it will come out any better. In all these cases, none of the updates or remakes have managed to hold a candle to their originals.

House on Haunted Hill is further proof that merely repackaging old goods in a glittering, flashy CGI processed exterior doesn't hide its basic flaws. It begins promisingly enough with some weird angle shots of the wonderfully insane Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute, where all the all the action takes place.

The title sequence and the opening fairground scene are a deceptively thrilling opening and the cutting edge bitchiness that follows is equally enjoyable. Geoffrey Rush even manages to look a little like Vincent Price after whom his character is based. Famke Janssen is making these juicy, vampy roles that no one else would touch all her own and doing a wonderful job as the current reigning Hollywood bit of nastiness.

The rest of the cast including rising star Taye Diggs is unexceptional. The film more or less follows Castle's camp classic in story line with some guests showing up at the Institute to try to make it through the night. For this, they would have received $10,000 in the original, but with inflation the reward sum in this remake is now a much more tempting one million.

The guest soon discover that their hosts, the very strange Mr. And Mrs. Price (Rush and Janssen) are decidedly more than meets the eye. Something is not quite right in the Price household and the guests soon start paying for the marital discord in the most gruesome manner.

The mystery thickens quite nicely until unfortunately after a fairly enjoyable hour or so the film falls for the CGI trappings of its predecessor from earlier in the year, the utterly dreadful Haunting. Just when the heat needs to be turned on and the scares to come to a shuddering climax, we are subjected to some horribly wispy and particularly inept CGI ghost/monster effects.

The result unfortunately is that a promising film ends up being just a little bit of a yawn with special effects that completely retract from its quality. It's not awful by any means, but certainly on the forgettable side. It's also not too scary either. Other than the building, the opening sequence or two and the awful climactic mayhem, there's not a lot to remember. Very average indeed.