This is a tough one to place on the good/greatness scales. Robert Wise is an odd director, very much a product of the last days of the old studio system. You watch West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Haunting and Star Trek: The Motion Picture and you couldn’t hope to get a handle on what his personal outlook as a director is, clearly he’s at the mercy of the bigger picture. Personally, of all those four, I’d always have said that The Haunting was the one he had the most control of, but that’s just a gut feeling, I have no idea really, except that this movie only served to validate that theory. Though the subject matter couldn’t be more different, you get the claustrophobia, and those wonderful deep focus wide angle shots (sorry, photographers, that was probably truly offensive inaccurate terminology, but I hope you know what I mean) so reminiscent of the black and white images in The Haunting, despite a different cinematographer.

The movie is pretty slow but it held my attention even on a night when my mind was on many other things. The ending is truly gripping and I’d watch it again in a heartbeat, I think. All the way through, though, one thought occurred to me: why hasn’t it been remade??? But apparently there’s gonna be a mini-series this year, Ridley Scott is involved. I don’t know how to feel about that. The old Alien, Blade Runner Scott, I’d be excited; but the new, slick Gladiator, one movie every 5 minutes assembly line Scott? This story definitely needs to be remade, it’s so relevant … but slick and glossy is the last thing it needs to be. But it’s still exciting that somebody’s finally having a go. And we’ll always have this. Triple bill it with Logan’s Run and, well, y’know what? The Haunting.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 1:30 am in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.