The Haunting (1999) on Netflix
PG-1319991h 53mFantasyHorrorMystery
After eleven years nursing her disabled mother, Nell is turned out of the Boston apartment and joins Dr. David Marrow's insomnia study at Hill House. Luke and Theodora are the other subjects.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb5.1/1085,326 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes16%
Trailer
Plot summary
Eleanor Vance has spent eleven years caring for her disabled mother in a Boston apartment. When her mother dies, her sister Jane and Jane's husband Lou inherit the place and send Nell out, leaving her with nowhere to go. An invitation arrives from Dr. David Marrow, who is recruiting volunteers for a study of insomnia at Hill House, a remote manor in the Berkshires, and Nell accepts it. At the house she meets the caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, and two other participants, Luke Sanderson and Theodora, an artist. Marrow and his assistants, Mary and Todd, follow. On the first night Marrow tells the guests about Hill House's original owner, the nineteenth-century textile tycoon Hugh Crain.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Haunting (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Steven Spielberg approached Stephen King in 1996 about a haunted house film and the two wrote a screenplay together, but they fell out over creative differences and the project died. King reworked his version into the 2002 miniseries Rose Red.
- The two directors effectively swapped films. While Jan de Bont was finishing post-production on Twister, Spielberg offered to take over Minority Report in exchange for handing him The Haunting, and de Bont then steered it back towards Shirley Jackson's novel rather than the 1963 version.
- Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel was hired to shoot the film but walked away over creative differences just one week into filming, and Karl Walter Lindenlaub took over the camera.
- Hill House's interiors were built inside the enormous dome in Long Beach, California that once housed Howard Hughes's H-4 Hercules flying boat. The handmade sets, designed by Argentine production designer Eugenio Zanetti, cost an estimated $8-10 million.
SPOILER
The studio was not satisfied with Jan de Bont's original ending, saying it "lacked clarity", and ordered a new one shot in June 1999 with Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta-Jones. De Bont said the reshoot added shots of the spirits of the children.- A short romantic scene between Lili Taylor's and Catherine Zeta-Jones's characters was cut from the finished film. Taylor said she was not surprised, because it had never felt integral to the story.
- De Bont said the first cut risked an R rating from the MPAA, who told the filmmakers it was simply too tense. Things were trimmed to reach PG-13, and he pointed out the film has no foul language, no guns and hardly any violence.
