When folks ask me for horror film suggestions, it is normally with the caveat that I’ve to provide you with one thing they don’t seem to be conversant in or have not seen shortly. One of many titles that recurrently comes up is a film that was critically panned when it first premiered in theaters within the late Nineties.
Properly, buckle up as a result of I will inform you why this underrated gem is properly value your time.
Throughout a time when the style pivoted towards post-Scream teen slasher tales like I Know What You Did Final Summer season and City Legend, a movie was launched that disrupted the established order and paid homage to the moody, pulpy thrillers of the previous — 4 many years prior to now, if we’re retaining monitor.
Home on Haunted Hill is the movie I am speaking about. I believe it is required Halloween viewing and, fortunate for you, the film is streaming free on Tubi proper now.
A free remake of a horror traditional, it is a schlocky outlier that leans closely into the model of the late ’90s, whereas retaining the Nineteen Fifties vibe of its predecessor. It contains a fairly strong forged, a depraved humorousness and presents a pleasant respite for audiences who have been searching for one thing apart from a gaggle of school children operating from a masked killer.
Do not miss any of our unbiased tech content material and lab-based evaluations. Add CNET as a most well-liked Google supply.
Home on Haunted Hill is the 1999 remake of William Fort’s 1959 B-movie traditional, which starred Vincent Worth and Carol Ohmart. The gist in each is just about the identical, centering on a rich (and peculiar) married couple who invite 5 friends to play a daring recreation: Survive the night time, and every individual takes house a money prize. As you might suspect, issues do not find yourself that reduce and dry.
Geoffrey Rush and Famke Janssen star as Steven Worth, a theme park mogul, and his spouse, Evelyn Stockard-Worth. The unique film discovered the couple inviting people to their would-be haunted mansion to tackle the dare; this film ups the ante and places all of them in an deserted asylum with a sinister previous.
Style fave Jeffrey Combs seems sporadically all through the film because the evil Dr. Vannacutt, the chief of the as soon as thriving Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane. In line with legend, the sufferers rioted towards the workers within the Nineteen Thirties, leaving a tainted (doubtlessly haunted) vitality permeating throughout the constructing’s partitions.
Jeffrey Combs stars in Home on Haunted Hill.
From the outset, you’ll be able to sense Home on Haunted Hill’s sly intentions by way of its extravagant, Gothic set design and stylized directorial model. Director William Malone leaned into this aesthetic, which cultivated a sly humorousness that fueled the film and infused it with parts of psychological terror and stunning bits of gore.
It was jarring when you think about the truth that we have been nonetheless a few years away from the grizzly torture development that overtook the style within the early ’00s. Nevertheless, as disruptive as these brutal sequences felt, Malone’s path retains them plausible throughout the film’s peculiar narrative actuality.
Famke Janssen and Geoffrey Rush star in Home on Haunted Hill.
The dynamic between Rush and Janssen is completely scrumptious and their dysfunction kinds the emotional basis of this story. Rush’s tackle Steven Worth looks like a tribute to the likes of Vincent Worth and John Waters, and he brings a Snidely Whiplash, scenery-eating panache to the position. His joyful vitality is infectious, and it is laborious to not root for him. However, belief me, you should not root for him.
Janssen is calculated and formidable as Evelyn, and gives a worthy adversary to her trickster husband. Because the group explores deeper into the bowels of the constructing, you could find her each relishing in Steven’s pranks and silently planning his demise. It is a love-hate factor paying homage to Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in 1989’s darkish comedy, Struggle of the Roses.
I might be remiss if I did not point out the slate of expertise carrying the film together with the duo above. You have got a roster of up-and-coming expertise from the period, together with Taye Diggs, Ali Larter and SNL alum Chris Kattan, together with Peter Gallagher, a recognizable title that already introduced a sure degree of clout to the venture.
Chris Kattan stars in Home on Haunted Hill.
Larter’s Sara (the ultimate lady of the film) and Diggs’s ex-baseball participant Eddie carry a lot of those sequences, and their star high quality positively shines by way of. However a spotlight for me is Kattan, who ditches the comedic stylings of his recognized sketch work to deliver a little bit of cynical logic to the combo as Pritchett, the constructing’s caretaker.
In case you go searching for critic evaluations of 1999’s Home on Haunted Hill, you may discover numerous unfavorable reactions to the film. Maybe it is as a result of it embraces the traditional ghost story narrative of the unique, relatively than conforming to the money-making mould of no matter horror development was bankable at the moment.
Home on Haunted Hill just isn’t a severe film, and it shouldn’t be taken significantly. It is a trendy, heightened, sometimes-silly horror story about greed, gluttony and the ghosts of the previous assembly the uncertainty of the long run. It is a hyperlink between many years and may be considered as an indication of issues to return within the style. However by way of all that mumbo jumbo I simply spouted, it is only one heck of a enjoyable film. Like I stated earlier: Required Halloween viewing.
