House on Haunted Hill (1999)

7/10

This is a remake of Vincent Price's original "House." Again, people are brought to a supposed haunted house, and if they can stay the night they 'win' money. One slight difference this time is that the actual house interferes and changes the guest list to Evelyn's birthday bash. There are a bunch of other changes, also, but it would take a novella to describe them all.

This was directed by William Malone ("Scared to Death", "FeardotCom"). The cast is impressive. Standing in Vincent Price's lead role is Stephen Price, played by Geoffrey Rush ("Pirates of the Caribbean", "Mystery Men"), Famke Janssen ("X-Men", "The Faculty") plays his wife Evelyn, Taye Diggs ("Equilibrium") plays Eddie, Dr. Don Blackburn is played by Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan plays the owner of the 'house' as Watson Pritchett, Ali Larter ("Final Destination" 1 & 2) is Sara, Bridgette Wilson plays the short lived Melissa, the esteemed Jeffrey Combs has some very good bits as Dr. Vannacutt, and finally Lisa Loeb has a cameo as a TV reporter. Whew; for that list of actors you would think this movie would be better.

The opening credits are rather neat. They we cut (ha!) back to the 30s where Dr. Van doing all kinds of unnecessary surgery on his patients in his institute while being filmed. The patients break out, kill the staff, and die in a fire because Dr. Van rigged his house to lockdown at the push of a button. Price's hot yet freaky wife sees a TV broadcast about the slaughter and wants to have her birthday party there. We cut to Price at his newest amusement park where we get a few surprises. Pretty nice, actually.

Our meat, err, guest are all chauffeured to the hospital/house. Price explains the rules while his wife freaks out that the guests are not who she invited and nearly gets impaled by a big shard of glass. The house locks down. Price is a big jokester, so he set up a bunch of scary stuff, but the lockdown is new to him. Pritchett explains how the mechanism for the locking devices is in the basement. Just so happens that that is where all the gruesome experiments happened.

So everyone goes exploring, we find our all kinds of neat background stories, and everyone lives happily ever after. Well, maybe not. One interesting note is that the end bad guy is NOT CGI'd, it was all optical FX. I found this to be rather impressive. It looked good during the first viewing, and I thought, "That is some great computer work". When I later found out it was all practical, I was floored.

I actually liked this version better than the original. The original mostly felt like an Agatha Christie story to me, while the remake felt like a horror movie.

The plot is decent, as is the acting. There is a lot of really spooky scenes that build up. Some of the jump scares are great. Whenever Vannacutt shows up you should just hide. I really liked the scares. What drug this movie down was the final bad guy. It felt silly, even though it looked great. The full backstory was a bit weak, not to mention how the eventual guests got on the list. We find out why, but how is a bit much. It does have some lag in the middle, but not much.

I recommend a buy on this one. It is fun, and would go well at a horror party.

*** SPOILERS ***

The house is actually haunted this time.

The new guests were invited because they are descendants of the original staff that experimented on everybody.

Famke Janssen is hot (ok, it's not a spoiler but I felt like putting that out there).

The ending with the B & W film with the new couple means what? This is some new movie being made in hell?

*** END SPOILERS