The Haunting (1963)
Directed by Robert Wise
Dr. John Markway recruits three strangers for a sleep-disorder study at the eerie and isolated Hill House. It soon becomes clear his real interest lies in the mansion itself and its sinister history, as they are forced to confront the nature of its horror…
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What critics compared The Haunting to
Here The Orphanage recalls previous haunted house movies, from Robert Wise’s The Haunting and Kubrick’s The Shining, to Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others and The Devil’s Backbone (whose brilliant, bighearted director, Guillermo del Toro, is the present film’s producer).
A Goth-Iberian “Peter Pan” with roots in such vintage spookfests as Robert Wise’s “The Haunting” (1963) and Alejandro Amenabar’s “The Others” (2001),“The Orphanage” is the best haunted-house-cum-ghost-movie I have seen in years.
The disappearance and the arrival of scientific ghost hunters (led by Geraldine Chaplin) are reminiscent of "Poltergeist" (1982), although Bayona more frequently strives for the rarefied psychological suggestiveness of "The Haunting" (1963) and Henry James' novella "The Turn of the Screw" (as well as its 1961 movie adaptation, "The Innocents").
Some music left on the cutting room floor when they were finishing The Exorcist , a mad old gypsy from the Universal monster movies, flesh-rotting ghosts straight out of J-horror, and maybe best of all, violent and assaultive sound design that recalls 1963's magnificent The Haunting.
Sometimes he takes the indirect approach (akin to Robert Wise's "The Haunting"), creating anxiety from the mundane: A handkerchief delicately wafting toward Christine's windshield is filled with foreboding.
The atmosphere and Gothic aesthetic feels like classic supernatural horror in the vein of Robert Wise’s “The Haunting,” with reliance on old school horror devices and unique elements of mystery and ambiguity rather than full CGI.
This fact may have been lost on effects-happy Hollywood (Exhibit A: Jan DeBont's high-tech--and thoroughly unscary--remake of Robert Wise's understated classic, The Haunting ), but thankfully it hasn't been lost on Spanish writer-director Alejandro Amen´bar, whose English-language debut The Others packs a formidable fright simply through the time-tested special effect of atmosphere.
Several additional films, like "The Others," have raised a few goose pimples of their own, but nothing quite to compare to the low-key chills of "The Haunting."
But in reality, this film has a lot more in common with such classic haunted-house tales as 1944's "The Uninvited" and the original 1963 version of "The Haunting."
I'm tempted to call The Others the best haunted house film since Robert Wise's 1963 masterstroke The Haunting.
His film is more in the vein of Robert Wise’s 1963 The Haunting than Cloverfield – which could be a problem commercially.
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I admit to writing off “Monster House” upon its arrival, only because while the film is wonderful, the story isn’t exactly original (ahem—Robert Wise’s “The Haunting”, anyone?), but the combination of a strong script, and truly down to Earth characters make “Monster House” a short but very entertaining piece of horror fantasy that reaches down into really human themes of loneliness, death, and puberty.
There are many other echoes of screen horror here: clips of Maria Bava’s Black Sabbath; portents of domestic madness in the mode of Polanski’s Repulsion; a general sense of claustrophobia that’s more than a little reminiscent of The Exorcist; a use of grey paint and an overall color-leeched palette to rival The Sixth Sense; and as female-centric psychological horror, it also recalls the evocation of shadow-steeped nocturnal anxiety so chillingly staged in Robert Wise’s The Haunting (63).
Following her 2015 Cesar win for her performance in his “Clouds of Sils Maria,” Kristen Stewart reunites with French auteur Olivier Assayas for “Personal Shopper,” a modern-day ghost story recalling such classy and often deliberately ambiguous examples of the genre as “Don’t Look Now” (1973) and “The Haunting” (1963).
(To describe the special effects further would be a betrayal of the film, but I’m not sure I’ve seen anything so unnerving since Robert Wise’s The Haunting .)
Several scenes recall monster-in-the-house classics, from Robert Wise’s “The Haunting” (1963) to Steven Spielberg’s raptor kitchen in “Jurassic Park” (1993).
Lit mostly with candles, the sprawling villa in which the film mostly takes place assumes a creepy aura reminiscent of the opulently spooky house in Robert Wise’s The Haunting.
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He's clearly learned lessons from Val Lewton , Wise 's " The Haunting ," and Polanski 's " Repulsion ," not to mention the films of Tarkovsky (some of the more intense nightmare imagery could come from the Russian filmmaker's " The Mirror " or " The Sacrifice ," and the deaf daughter here brought to mind a similar character in " Stalker ").
For a great classic haunted house film with still-effective shocks and chills (even after multiple viewings) and creepy atmosphere to spare, I would recommend “The Haunting” (1963 version – NOT the remake).