MovieChat Forums > The Haunting (1999) Discussion > Questions and satirical comments...

Questions and satirical comments...


This movie made no sense at all. How did Dull (oops, I mean Nell) make the cognitive leap to Carolyn being her great-grandmother? And that happened before she saw the necklace in the painting, which, by the way, was really stupid since that painting was replicated all over the house. Who wouldn’t notice 80 paintings of a necklace that’s the same as you are wearing?

Was it the first wife in the photo album, or was the woman always Carolyn?

The crucifixion pose at the end? Stagy and just plain ridiculous.

What did she die of in the end? Although that didn’t happen soon enough.

Nell was such a freaking simp. She’s running (badly) down hallways one minute, and then smiling and beaming the next minute like the Best Day Ever.

The only thing that would have scared me would be if her b!tch of a sister showed up at the house.

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[Spoilers.]

A lot of these issues have been the basis for many discussions on this board.

The main problem I think is this: the original versions (novel and 1963 movie) were coherent but rather downbeat stories of Eleanor's psychological unraveling at the house. For 1999, the filmmakers tried to make her, by the climax, a sort of action-adventure heroine. Unfortunately, she's still dead at the end, as in the earlier versions, so the attempt to go "upbeat" doesn't work.

I'm sorry I can't answer the Carolyn questions right now. I'd actually have to see the movie again to follow that plot point.

Her death seems to be caused by the Hugh Crain ghost/demon throwing her against the floor. See the shooting script here, which has her thrown against a door, not the floor, but the results are the same:

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-haunting_production.html

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The original ending sounded better with Hugh Crain popping out of the fireplace and killing her, I believe there was a small clip of it in the making of documentary.

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I might go with an idea closer to Shirley Jackson's original: Hugh Crain doesn't appear at all. In the novel his influence, if any, is indirect. He's discussed a lot but never actually seen.

Jackson's ending might have been too downbeat for DreamWorks. Eleanor is evicted from the house by the professor, who thinks she is becoming mentally unstable. She, in turn, (desperate not to return to her sister, among other disappointments) commits suicide by driving her car into a tree.

The '63 version is fairly close to that except that her crash may be an accident rather than a deliberate act.

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Yep its crap

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You've commented on almost every threads concerning this movie on a single day. If you hated it so much, then perhaps get a life or some *beep*

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