You have our apologies in advance. Mike challenged us to record a podcast discussing movies with “Haunting” or “Haunted” in the title. If you search “Haunting” in IMdB, there are well over 4000 films with that word in the title. Sadly, only a few of them are any good. Or, at least from what we’ve determined so far. There are only so many “Haunting of” movies that a critic can stomach in a month.
At first, this appeared to be an easy challenge. Of course, I could select The Haunting! Or The Haunting of Hill House (same story). Liz immediately doused this option with cold water. Anything having to do with the Shirley Jackson Novel and any of its descendants would be too easy a layup. This was to be a challenge. Go find some OTHER decent “Haunting Of” movies. It shouldn’t be that hard, right? Some of the greatest horror movies of all time about about hauntings. The Shining. The Conjuring. The Sixth Sense. The Others. The Innocents. The Wind. The Innkeepers. The Night. The Sentinel. Paranormal Activity. The Babadook. Curiously, none of those films has the word “Haunt” in them.
All of these movies are excellent horror movies and involve hauntings or ghosts. So, it’s not the theme of the movie. Ghosts can be awesome and scary!
Here’s the problem, horror fans:
A lot of the movies that use “The Haunting of” or “A Haunting In” tend to be fairly generic. Often they are done on the cheap, and often they are light in the gore and violence quotient. So, while you might think that this would play to a good gateway film, the risk is that many of these films are BORING. Real snoozers. There is so much been there, done that within this heading.
There is a very low entry condition criteria for a good “Haunting of” tale. You need a good back story, a reason for a good haunting. You need a way for this haunt to manifest itself. And you need compelling protagonists. There is a common trend that pits teenagers as the targets of hauntings, and that is unfortunate. If anything, the compelling stories are more for the elderly; people who have a sense of history, regret, and longing. For teenagers and twenty-somethings, there is a lack of gravity or weight to the protagonist back stories.
It is also somewhat difficult to make a haunting story fun. A movie like Six16en Ghosts pulled it off. It isn’t a great narrative by most standards, but it is a fun spectacle with some terrific-looking ghosts. The same can be said for The House on Haunted Hill, where Vincent Price is at his scenery-chewing best. Far too often though, it is the road most commonly travelled. A story of someone done wrong. In the basement. With a grudge.
We gave it our best attempt:
There is some entertainment in seeing horror critics in scramble mode, to be sure. We have endeavored to do our best to find you “Haunting Of,” “Haunting In,” “Haunting Around,” and “Haunting Between” films for you to enjoy. Sadly, we had to abandon ship on a number of the features we started, but we believe you will find some of our discoveries to your liking.
With that said, please enjoy Episode 180: “The Haunting Of…”
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