Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 135

Jan de Bont’s T h e H a un ti n g

131

returned to the house, where she explains, “I’m right where I’m wanted. I’m home.
You see, this is the room where Carolyn had her baby before she ran away. The
children wanted me to see this so I would know this was my home. Yes, Carolyn
was my great, great grandmother and the children are my family. This is where I
belong. I have to stay. I’m not afraid anymore. I have to stay for the children, they
need me... He’s still hunting them. But if I’m here, he can’t harm them” {The
Haunting, 1999). After slashing Crain’s portrait in anger, Luke, in yet another
special effects extravaganza, is propelled by a rug into the fireplace and killed by
a swinging pendulum.
In a final technical display, Hugh Crain bursts forth from his portrait, threatening
everyone, and Eleanor steps in to protect them, “It’s not about them. It’s about
family. It’s about Carolyn and the children from the mills. Well I’m family. Grandpa,
and I’ve come home. Now it’s just you and me, Hugh Crain. Purgatory’s over. You
go to hell” {The H aunting, 1999). Hugh disappears as Eleanor dies, followed by
images of happy children and soothing music. One reviewer noted that audience
members actually laughed during scenes that were supposed to make them scream
(Bloom, 1).
While the characters and the story have been severely upstaged by the
ostentatious exhibition of special effects in this 1999 vers ion of The H aunting o f
Hill House, quite a different approach was taken by director Robert Wise in his
1963 interpretation. Here, there is deeper development of the characters, whose
personalities and behavior are more strongly linked. We see more reasoning and
motivation behind their words and actions. But the most notable difference is the
use of suggestion, rather than graphic demonstrations of the ghostly residents of
Hill House. This Eleanor (Julie Harris) was haunted, not by what was on the screen,
but by what her imagination conjured up. We don’t really see the ghosts, we just
hear them, along with Eleanor. What we do see is the reaction on Eleanor’s face as
she creates her own visions of what lurks behind the doors and walls. Members of
the audience are actively involved through “theater of the mind,” imagining
Eleanor’s images and painting their own pictures of evil and its concealed
personification. Silence becomes as menacing as thumps and cries and groaning.
Edmund Bansak, in Fearing the Dark, describes Wise’s preoccupation with
things unseen as reflecting the influence of Val Lewton. Wise is quoted as saying,
“You pick some things up by a sort of osmosis, things you’re not really conscious
of. Val impressed me with the subtlety of his approach, the way he could get reactions
and effects without going overboard and being so obvious or heavy-handed” (462).
Noting that “there are many who consider Wise’s The H aunting to be the scariest
haunted house film ever made, a veritable Citizen Kane of ghost films,” Bansak
points out that Wise directed “a film that bore all the Lewton trademarks (a literate
script, strong female characters, expressionistic photography, low-key lighting, a