Being that Halloween is fast approaching, I figure I will turn my attention towards a genre I hold quite nearly and oh so dearly to my darkened heart, the horror genre.
Today's random review is 1999's House on Haunted Hill, a decidedly sub par remake of the 1959 Vincent Price classic.
A movie where we watch true pros such as Geoffrey Rush and Fammke Jannsen carry the likes of Taye Diggs and Ali Larter through a little over ninety minutes of ho hum horror that has plagued the market for decades now.
We also are treated to the last gasps of then fledgling stars such as Bridget Wilson, Chris Kattan, and Peter Gallagher (and of course his massive eyebrows).
Anyhow, in the interest of fairness, I have provided a trailer for any of you who may not have seen it to make up your own damn minds.
So before I dig into this review, here you go.
So the setup is simple, wealthy scare tactic maestro Victor Price (subtle I know) is arranging his extraordinarily hostile and adversarial wife's birthday party in, at her request, an old mental asylum that played home to a mad doctor who tortured and killed his patients in a fire decades earlier.
While he is arranging the guest list, he becomes distracted and the apparently tech savvy spirits tamper with the list, causing a group comprised of complete strangers to arrive and Mr. Price to offer a one million dollar prize to any and all who can last the night in this "funky old house".
As we all can expect from any mainstream horror movie, the kill sequences are fairly predictable. But I will say that this movie does have it's fair share of horrific and thoroughly haunting imagery that can give one a decent scare.
The characters make absurd decisions that no real person would make (after all it is a horror movie) and are largely forgettable and wooden, the only ones with any real color drawn into them are Rush and Janssen's, which is likely due to the talent of the performers than the writers.
Their scenes together as hostile husband and wife are quite hammy and filled with what I like to call "knife to the throat" acting at it's finest.
Although tragically, the subplot plays out just as weakly as the main story but still, it's not without it's fun.
The movie works best when it uses distorted human movement and twisted camera tricks, not when it resorts to badly comprised CGI hobgoblins and ghosts, I would say the film really does lose it's flavor about two thirds in due to this very issue.
I would explain but I would rather not play the spoiler, so I will just say that if you like mediocre and predictable then you will love the last leg of the picture.
I find that this movie simply served to wet my appetite for Horror and I think I am going to delve into something fresher, maybe find a nice surprise.
On the other hand, there is nothing like the classics, so we'll just see what I end up spewing out over the next week or so.
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