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Haunted

Haunted

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not a big movie but an enjoyable evening
Review: Haunted is one of those rare ghost stories where the ending completely catches you by surprise. Like the film, Sixth Sense.
Without giving it away, this isolated english rural house is the setting for the erstwhile reporter, David Ash, to unravel an old, old ghost who is claimed to be haunting the current inhabitants. Simplistically told, well drawn, I dare anyone to guess what's really going on.
Anthony Andrews is excellent as the eldest son, Kate Beckinsdale as the flighty, seductive Christina Mariell, Aidan Quinn as the manipulated David Ash. A thoroughly delightful screen version of James Herbert's excellent novel.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Ghost Movie in the World!
Review: I LOVE this movie it is my all time Favorite!I have seen this movie so many times and I still want to watch it again and again.If you like ghosts,seances,psychology and England then this is the movie for you!Its actually very very spooky this is a Must have for anyone who buys VHS tapes!
Have fun and remember, these things on the video could actually happen. Now Thats Spooky! I give it 100 stars

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Attempts to mask clichéd story with fashionable excess.
Review: Add Lewis Gilbert's overlooked (and with good reason) "Haunted" to the steadily growing list of cliché-riddled horror movies that form the nadir of Hollywood's throw-away movies. Featuring a beautiful yet strangely meek set design, a particularly well-known cast, eerily familiar scoring, and a plot that is little more than a recycle bin of overused twists, and you come up with a movie that tries to cover up its inept storytelling with fashionable excess.

The movie begins promising enough, when David Ash (Aidan Quinn), an English college professor, receives a letter from one Ms. Webb (Anna Massey), known as Nanny Tess to the children who live in the house she believes to be haunted by evil spirits. Ash, who lost his twin sister at a young age, has typically built an emotional block against all things supernatural as a way of not dealing with his guilt. His capacity for scrutiny forces him back to his hometown of Sussex to quell Nanny Tess's fears about the ghosts she claims are haunting her home.

But, of course, he soon is party to strange occurrences once within the house: there are scratching noises on his door in the night, voices can be heard throughout the house without a body to claim them, and other sorts of delusional phenomena that he passes off as mere child's play. Of course, the so-called children are adults: there's jokester Simon (Alex Lowe), who delights in playing pranks, tight-lipped, serious Robert (Anthony Andrews), who finds it his place to rule over his sister, Christina (Kate Beckinsdale), who instantly takes a liking to David.

After some more of the usual bump-in-the-night trickery and games of the mind, the story begins to fall into even more familiar territory, losing what little suspense it had going for it and settling for a plot that grows ludicrous and bombastically bad. A tepid love interest with Christina leads to tension between he and Robert, who also seems to have a more-than-brotherly relationship with his sister; talk about family dysfunction. And of course, David will see his long-gone sister romping around the house and the grounds, leading him to each piece of the puzzle surrounding the apparitions of the house.

These and many other routine plot twists and storylines abound without hesitation through the film's entire. I enjoyed the beginning of the relationship between David and Christina, played nicely by Quinn and Beckinsdale, who share a warm chemistry. But the script is a waste of their talent, keeping Quinn's character in a glassy-eyed haze much of the time, while Beckinsdale provides various T&A shots that are distasteful and unappealing despite her attractiveness.

The mere fact that this movie had some good potential, as evident in its well-developed beginning, also furthered my fatigue throughout the final act; perhaps I expected too much. And why not? If a movie such as this can afford the talents of Beckinsdale and Quinn and waste them both, it could at least make an effort to look like a first-class movie. Here, the sets are nice to look at, but lack the opulence needed to truly dazzle an audience, such as that of Robert Wise's "The Haunting." The musical score is reflective of dozens of scores from similar films, playing like something out of an "Unsolved Mysteries" rerun, which prevents it from evoking any believable tone or energy.

Director Lewis Gilbert seems to have made an attempt to create a movie that is marginally pleasing, but "Haunted" is little more than a waste of time better spent looking for a better movie. His "surprise" ending may not be easily spotted until its arrival, but the satisfaction it provides (or lack thereof) is something entirely different. This is a very unremarkable horror film, one that attempts to put a spin of elegance on a standard, run-of-the-mill plot that can't seem to find a suitable hiding spot these days.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: it is a great haunting movie
Review: i loved this movie! i love aidan quinn, who is so understated
and hunky he makes me drool.
the story is about a man who gets lured into this huge house where there are real people or are they? the costumes are great,
the story line wonderful, the music really great. a good rainy
day afternoon movie.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Anti-Horror
Review: Being a fan of good horror I am always looking for new horror flicks, so after reading the reviews here I decided to try out Haunted. I was a bit disappointed by the film, and it occurred to me that Haunted is more of an anti-horror film. It's almost as if the creators of Haunted took the stereotypical horror flick and did the reverse with Haunted. Instead of the characters being a bit cheesy and fun, the characters in Haunted were dulled and lacked intensity. There was no blood or gore, and the only real scare/startle attempts in the film were the few instances of someone/something popping up in front of your face yelling "Boo!" Instead of having that one gratuitous skin shot, there were quite a few skin shots (about the only enjoyment I got out of this film - but not what I was looking for in a horror flick =). In fact, if it weren't for all of the skin shots, I don't think there is anything else in this film that would have kept it from being rated 'G'.

Also unlike many other horror flicks, this one has a plot that is easy to follow, but then again, the whole mystery behind the plot was easy to figure out (which I did about a quarter of the way through the movie).

Overall, I can't give this any more than three stars. The acting was good but the characters were dull, the plot was good but very basic and easy to figure out, what little special effects there were had little effect, and the film lacked any sort of thrills, chills or electricity. Haunted is good enough to rent and watch once, but not a film I would suggest any fan of horror actually purchase.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Story
Review: The acting is excellent, the movie is filled of unexpected surprises and twist and turns. I would give it 5 stars if there were more high tech illustrations. But it is highly recommended and worth your money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Should be a Classic
Review: I dont like modern horror films at all but this movie is an old fashioned ghost story to rival the best of the classics eg House of Usher etc
The gorgeous Kate Beckinsdale plays an endearingly unforgettable role
Aidan Quinn was fantastic and I found the scene at the beginning where he exposed a bogus psychic hilarious.
It is charming in an old fashioned eery way and there is a twist in the tail near the end which would make Roald Dahl proud

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Are we ghosts or are ghosts real?
Review: This film is a ghost story of a very special type. The hero is an American professor just arrived in Cambridge, England. He does not believe in ghosts. He is summoned by someone and enters into a country mansion where three brothers and sister live with their old Nanny. She is the one calling for him and he does not find anything wrong with the house at first. Then little by little he discovers that things are slightly wrong. He lost his twin sister at the age of six. She drowned. He is thus plunged into a totally fake environment where everything is a pure lie, a pure unreal reality that looks, sounds, tastes, feels normal. And the descent into hell starts. He ignores the signs that something is wrong and decides to stay because it suddenly begins sounding strange. The descent would have no end if it were not for his drowned sister. So he will finally escape, but in what mental state ! Still convinced that ghosts do not exist ? Maybe not, maybe yes, though we know they exist. Ghosts are created by some guilt that is burried deep in our subconscious and unconscious and that guilt will never go away. Ghosts are just the reenacting of the events that produced that guilt. And he learns that from ghosts. So are they the figment of our guilt or are they real ? No answer emerges from this film that is made in such a tactful and delicate way that we really doubt of everything at the end of the story. Even the walls of our houses seem unreal and ghostlike. That's English talent at its acme : to make us doubt of our strongest truths and beliefs. England is a misty country and mist as well as fog blur the picture of the real world, make reality fuzzy.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: haunt
Review: This is the film of person who really love the horror movie could be enjoy it. It is good movie and I just really like to collect it, watch it if you like the mystery movie. This is reviewed from video disc.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Mediocre horror/mystery featuring Kate Beckinsale
Review: Some genuinely scary moments here, but the film is so saturated with the most hackneyed horror staples that the good scenes are undermined. Horror has long made money off exploiting young women, but it's particularly painful to see the talented Kate Beckinsale (The Last Days of Disco, Brokedown Palace, Pearl Harbor) labor under Lewis Gilbert's exploitative direction. Sir John Gielgud seems tranquilized in a Mephistophelian bit part, and Aidan Quinn looks sorry he picked up the phone the day Gilbert called. The early glimmers of Brideshead Revisited are quickly bludgeoned away by crude and continual sexual references and gratuitous flashes of nudity, and a facile linking of sex with death in the tradition of Slumber Party Massacre Part 6. As intellectually light and unambiguous as a Scooby Doo episode.


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