Some Movies Are Born Bad

In an email message dated 10/29/99 7:20:27 AM, I wrote:

"As I was saying I was motorcycling to the east bay today, and I had a lot of time to think. Anyway I started thinking about the movie the Haunting that I saw a few months ago. It sucked. For so many reasons. Such a waste. The Haunting is the worst film of 1999."

Two days later I wrote:

I know: more in depth, please, Ted. That's what you want. Okay. First, the director. Jan DeBont. DeBont started as a cinematographer and did such nice work (Die Hard, Hunt for Red October, Basic Instinct) that they let him direct... Speed. I need to say something here. I'm not being sarcastic. I am a huge supporter/fan of the film Speed. I think it worked, and revolutionized (for better or worse) the action film genre. Keanu Reeves was better than ever, and Sandra Bullock was a revelation. (A shame that she, or whoever, has managed to drive a stake through the heart of her career.) The film was exhilarating, despite the oh-so-common tacked on second ending so popular with the action/adventure/sci-fi/horror genres of the last couple decades. Remember Aliens? How many times is that "bitch" going to come back to haunt us and Ripley? That reminds me, we need to move on to the Haunting and why it sucks.

But not just yet. I had high hopes for Twister, de Bont's second film as director. But Bill Paxton, who can be good, and Helen Hunt, who can't, turned in dull, lackluster performances. The film had no characters, the story had no arc, it was a big commercial for Pepsi (rent it and count the cans), it was an excuse for Lucas geeks to play with computers and effects. It was bad, and it was a disappointment.

Next: Speed 2: Cruise Control. You wouldn't think a film could be this much worse than a film as bad as Twister. By this time I lost any positive feelings I had had for de Bont. Speed 2 was a rip-off, and a disaster. Unbelievably stupid. I was waiting to hear that de Bont had checked himself into a clinic, because only a boozer or an addict could manage this slipshod a project.

Haunting, The (1999): I saw the previews. I thought maybe this could be good. It looked like a perfect use of special effects-- those gargoyles, etc. Garbage.

First the cast: Liam Neeson. I know he made Schindler's List. I know. And Schindler's List was good; I liked it. But Schindler was boring. And who better to play a boring man than another boring man. Liam Neeson is the most boring actor working today. Did you see him in Michael Collins, or Les Miserables? No, of course not. No one did. No one saw those boring, overlong films. And there's Nell and Rob Roy and Star Wars 4-- and countless others-- where he plays essentially the same dull, somewhat befuddled, oversized man who isn't particularly attractive or interesting.

Lili Taylor. I have always found her to be very, very unappealing as an actress. So, that's too bad for her, maybe, but I can let her start off with a clean slate. Sort of. Or... Well the point is that when she is screaming at the ghosts at the end of this movie to "leave the children alone" or some such, I was caught between laughing and cringing. So stupid-- and I know-- the screenwriter (first, and hopefully last, by David Self) put those words in her mouth. But she said them.

A tangental point: Everything in this country is to "save our children" now, that this seemed like the dullest, dumbest, statement I've ever heard in a film. It has come to mean nothing. Someone can say it about something, and if you disagree, well then you don't care about the children. Save our children from the guns, the drugs, the homosexuals, the religious right, the meat, the cigarets, the sex, the language, the movies, the music, the men, the perverts, the violence (real, televised, imagined, feared, suppressed, supposed), the anorexia, the bulimia, the internet, the barbies, the toy guns, the cancer, the cars, the polution, the television, the media, the liberals, the republicans, their own reasoning. Save our children from it all. But I digress. I really do; I'm sorry about that.

Catherine Zeta Jones is very pretty and not untalented, but she seems to take roles arbitrarily based on what seems like will be the biggest blockbuster of the season: The Mask of Zorro, Entrapment ("itch wot copsh do to people"). Owen Wilson rules, and as Luke he gets off easiest. He cracks wise, and wonders what the hell he's doing there, and why The Minus Man isn't going to receive a wider release. He must feel some sort of satisfaction, or a sense of freedom, from this grotesquerie when he his decapitated by a gigantic booby trap of a piece of swinging metal hidden in the fireplace (it's stupid).

The Haunting had a Shirley Jackson novel, and a 1960s film version to work from. Neither of these were flawless, but they were touched by God when compared to this updated, appaling disaster. The book was told from the point of view of an emotionally crippled girl standing on the verge of mental abandon. By the end she has taken the proper steps to a "happy" ending. In the remake she conquers the harrowing ghosts of child slavery ring leaders and is cured (?).

As usual from de Bont, any characterization is thrown out in favor of visual effects. This is awesome if you are a retarded person with the mind of a 4 year old. That's the real problem, I guess. No one cared enough to tell DeBont or the writer or producers that this film is crap. They figured they had put enough checks down in the special effects column that it had erased a need for checks in other columns: sense, plot, dialog, characters, self respect.