House on Haunted Hill

1999

Action / Crime / Fantasy / Horror / Mystery / Thriller

63
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 42% · 61 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 42% · 50K ratings
IMDb Rating 5.6/10 10 63190 63.2K

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Plot summary

An amusement park mogul offers a random group of diverse people $1 million to spend the night in a decrepit former mental institution.

Director

William Malone Photo
William Malone

Top cast

Ali Larter Photo
Ali Larter as Sara Wolfe
James Marsters Photo
James Marsters as Channel 3 Cameraman
Janet Tracy Keijser Photo
Janet Tracy Keijser as Girl on Wires
Famke Janssen Photo
Famke Janssen as Evelyn Stockard-Price
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
854.69 MB
1280*690
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 32 min
Seeds 9
1.71 GB
1920*1036
English 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 32 min
Seeds 36

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by edenney01 7 / 10

Entertaining and pretty scary, until the last 10 minutes.

I won't go into a full review, since there are countless others and they all say about the same thing, which is that the movie is actually pretty good until the last 5 or 10 minutes, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys scary movies. It really has a nice mix of suspense, horror, gore, and levity, without overdoing it on any of those, or with the special effects (except for the ending). The score is also pretty good, and I liked the use of Marilyn Manson's eerie remake of "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This". Unfortunately, it wasn't enough for the filmmakers that the house just be evil or haunted... someone involved with the film decided the "evil" should have some sort of actual form. I think that was a very bad idea, but it was a bad idea made much MUCH worse by some very cheesy fractal/mirrored CGI effects. Maybe they blew their budget on the set and the actors (quite possible), and didn't have enough left over to properly give form to the "evil" with CGI, so they just settled for what they could get. IMO it would've been much better if they'd never given any form to it at all. I gave this movie a rating of 7 in this review, but I'd really give it a 6.5 if I could. If not for the horrible turn the movie takes in the last 10 minutes, with the absurd mirrored fractal CGI effects, I'd actually have given it a 7.5 to an 8. Everybody's comments about the ending are spot on.... it's just a huge let down.Btw, that sun rising over the ocean at the end is a pretty big goof. The movie is set on the west coast, where the sun SETS over the ocean.
Reviewed by AlsExGal 7 / 10

It's actually not a remake of the original film...

... in that pieces of the plot are borrowed, but there is quite a bit of original material added including background information , and I'd say this version is much scarier than the 1959 William Castle film. The only thing the original had that this one lacks is the irreplaceable Vincent Price, and this 1999 version does a bit of homage to him by naming the wealthy man Stephen Price who hosts a birthday party for his wife in a supposedly haunted house.As in the original ,the Prices are hostile to each other, but Mrs. Price is staying because she gets no money in a divorce but gets it all if Mr. Price dies. Also, as in the original, there are five guests who get - in this case - one million dollars each if they stay the entire night. Anybody who leaves forfeits their money to the others. What's different? Well the road the plot takes from there is different, and the beginning of the film details the origins of the haunted house. It was originally the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane run by the sadistic Dr. Vannacutt. In 1931 the inmates manage to free themselves from their cells and start a fire that kills all of the patients and all but five of the staff. The house has meant death or tragedy to anybody who lived in it since.So the five guests who arrive are not who Price invited. His wife doesn't know them either. And after everybody is inside it turns out that turning chicken and wanting to leave would be futile because the house shuts itself down, sealing every window and door. It was a feature when the place was an insane asylum in case of escape.So at this point wouldn't it be wise just to sit in the civilized renovated upstairs portion of the house, all in one little group, and wait out the night? But no. This group goes down the fateful but familiar path of "Some malevolent force is out to get us so let's split up and explore the basement", which is the original insane asylum part of the house. Downstairs interesting frights and discoveries about exactly who the guests are await them, and I'll just let you watch and find out what happens. It does rely quite a bit more on suspense and less on gore than most modern horror films. I'll just say this thing scared me to death when I saw it in the theater years ago, and the William Castle/Vincent Price version was eerie and psychologically interesting, but I have never found it all that frightening.
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