Celluloid Heroes

You know all my life, I have been waiting for an adventure.

Rule #1 in telling a good ghost story: the less you show of the ghost, the better. Robert Wise understood that in 1963, Jan de Bont ignores it in 1999.

To be honest, for the first half of this new adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s classic novel, the story follows the book and the original movie with reasonable fidelity, and thus for the first hour, The Haunting is reasonably effective and spooky. The ghostly manifestations are done with sound and suggestion, not ham-handed visuals. After that, however, the special effects take over and the film loses all narrative cohesion.

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You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage!

Aliens represents a true rarity among movies, a sequel that not only equals or even surpasses the original, but also one that stands alone as work unto itself. You could see this movie without knowing the first ever existed. Knowing the original allows you to enjoy the sequel on other layers of course.

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