You really do have to wonder what filmmakers are thinking sometimes. Take truly one of the greatest horror movies ever made, itself based on one of the greatest horror novels ever written, and hand remake duties to director Jan De Bont - fresh from, ahem, Speed 2. Needless to say, it didn't work out well. Still, in a sense one can see why it was hoped they could successfully update Robert Wise's 1963 adaption of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. The original is a near-perfect example of less-is-more horror in the vein of Wise's mentor Val Lewton, creating a sense of the supernatural purely through suggestive camerawork, editing and sound, with nothing ghostly actually shown. De Bont's film, by contrast, relies heavily on CGI to show the phenomena in detail, which - misguided though it may have been - is at least a different approach. Alas, as well as being not remotely scary and wasting a great cast (Liam Neeson, Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Owen Wilson), The Hauting remake also proved spectacularly out of touch with the times, as that same year The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project brought back Lewton-esque less-is-more horror in a big way.
