8. The Haunting (1999)
You might be able to excuse a slow or lethargic horror movie in the case of an excellent payoff. If all that tension and, uh, "lingering," actually builds to something horrifying or memorable, there's a good chance that you could forgive all the lackluster material what came before: the climb was justified, so to speak. But what about if a horror movie is slow and lethargic and there's no payoff at all? Or, at least, the movie plods onwards until you're hoping and praying for something to happen, only for it to not. At all. Ever. Reader, meet The Haunting. The Haunting, meet the reader. Jan de Bont's incredibly slow and uneventful haunted house movie tries to win you over with its atmospherics, but fails to realise that - at one point - things should happen. The end result of this one is a movie so unscary that it arguably creates a new sub-genre - the "anti-horror movie." Yes, it's an unnecessary remake, so good things probably weren't expected anyway, but unlike the movie of the same name on which this one was based, The Haunting trades genuine scares for a film about people in a house going up against lame special effects. Yawn.