The Haunting

The Haunting – “It was an evil house from the beginning - a house that was born bad.” Stared by Julie Harris as Eleanor Lance, Claire Bloom as Theodora or “Just Theo”, Richard Johnson as Dr. John Markway and Russ Tamblyn as Luke Sanderson, this movie is based on the classic novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. The Haunting, 1963, directed by Robert Wise, was not scary because of what I saw in the movie; it was what I could not see that scares me the most. It is because what a person does not see makes the mind create things that are very likely worse than reality. It is in the state of the mind. This movie plays a lot on our emotional and psychological part where when we tend to imagine the horror in our mind. This movie frightens the viewer by its intense powerful sound and simple visual effects, creating a horrifying experience. The director of the movie, Robert Wise was a sound effects editor and film editor. He edited the sound for the movie, Citizen Kane. Naturally, being a good sound editor, he did a good job using sound to scare the viewer. There was a part where the door of the room Theodora and Eleanor Lance was in keep banging, it was as though there was some force from the other side of the door banging it and trying to get in. It was frightening enough just to see the door banging and hearing the sound of the banging. That particular scene lasted quite long until the banging stop. I could still remember the scene that very night after I had watched the movie. I couldn’t really sleep at night because I was frightened and I kept looking at my room door, feeling scared that it would start banging by itself and that night, I kept my hands to myself. I could still remember the part when the time Eleanor was in bed, when she felt that she was holding Thor’s hand but when she woke up with a shock saying “God! God! Whose hand was I holding?” when she realized that Thor was sleeping at another end of the room. The sound played a big part of the movie, there is a part in the scene where Eleanor was very frighten and was explaining about the crying of a child she heard at night, in fact there was actually her imagination of a child when she heard the voice, the child was solely imagined in her mind because only the voice was heard. Dr. John Markway said to her “There was no child, remember? Just a voice.” The director was also good at making images scary. There is a part of the movie when a face could be seen at the door. The crafting of the door look as though it was an ugly face staring at them.