1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 104: Haunted
A ghost movie doesn’t need good performances or a compelling story. It needn’t even be frightening. What it does require are recognizable tropes, careful pacing, a distinctive location, and off-kilter photography.
Haunted (1995) has those things.
The Sussex estate where most of it takes place is the gorgeous, seldom-filmed Parham Park, here called “Edbrook.” Its Elizabethan manor has dozens of rooms – some grand, some quirky.
Outside the manor are green hills and a pond.
Edbrook is populated by a trio of aristocratic siblings …
… and by their catatonic old servant, Nanny Tess, played by that strange crone, Anna Massey. (Even when she was a not-unattractive starlet in Frenzy and Peeping Tom, she was, well, odd-looking.) The family’s doctor – Sir John Gielgud, in an engaging, gratuitous role – lives nearby.
The plot owes much to Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.” We witness the Edbrook household’s downfall through the eyes of a “parapsychologist,” Professor Ash (Aidan Quinn). He has his own troubles. Many years ago, his kid-sister accidentally drowned. He occasionally glimpses her – or seems to. Is the person he “sees” a different little girl? Is she a ghost? Is she a trick of the mind? Professor Ash takes a skeptical attitude. He’s no supernaturalist; his “fieldwork” consists of infiltrating and debunking séances.
At one such gathering, the word “Edbrook” is murmered, and not long afterward, a letter arrives from that address. It’s a plea for help, on behalf of the disturbed Nanny Tess. Intrigued, the Professor packs up his ghost-detecting equipment and rides a train to the countryside. He is met, at the station, by Christina (Kate Beckinsale), the chatty middle sibling at Edbrook. She drives him to the estate and tells him about her family. Her friendliness takes an unexpected turn when she removes her clothing and jumps into the pond. She is promptly joined by Simon (Alex Lowe), her frivolous younger brother – the “spare.”
Arriving at the manor, Professor Ash notes various nudes of Christina painted by the lordly older brother, Robert (Anthony Andrews, of The Scarlet Pimpernel and Brideshead Revisted, very much in his element).
The siblings’ life at Edbrook would be an uninhibited frolic but for the brooding of Nanny Tess. Alas, the old woman’s meeting with Professor Ash is an abject failure. She continues to “see ghosts.”
Rather than admit defeat and return to his university, the Professor whiles away more days with the lovely Christina.
Her brothers are less welcoming. Simon is always playing obnoxious jokes. Robert is downright unfriendly. He tells the Professor to leave. The Professor stays put. When he isn’t with Christina, he tinkers with his equipment or strolls the grounds. The scenery is pleasant. The light is soft … and yet, somehow, there is a glare. Really, the lighting is extraordinary. Things look lavender without actually being that color, as if persistently touched with a flash-bulb’s after-effect. Everything is perfectly, nightmarishly illumined.
The Professor sees curious things. Then, one stormy night, he falls into the pond. …
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This is a ghost story, yes, but the ghosts are clever window-dressing. Haunted’s objective is to satirize the degenerate rich – or, more precisely, viewers’ lurid obsession with the degenerate rich. The older movie that Haunted channels has nothing to do with ghosts. I’m referring to Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1956): “a perverse and wickedly funny melodrama,” Roger Ebert tells us,
If the locations are utterly genuine – and they must be, to follow the Masterpiece Theatre template – then how does the movie tip its hand? How does it declare its fakery? Rather brazenly. By using body doubles. And by showing their faces. Not just once; I dunno, at least three times. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, … you get the idea.
Critics don’t. Every critic I’ve read has suggested that the filmmaking is sloppy. But that just isn’t true. The rest of the movie looks great – even the ludicrous climactic special effects are spectacular in their way. And everything moves along at just the right clip. But the crucial detail is that the body-double “mistake” occurs too many times. It must be deliberate. The director, Lewis Gilbert, made James Bond movies, for goodness’s sake. Those movies aren’t shy about heaping on the cheese, and they’re the opposite of profound; but no one, as far as I know, accuses them of technical incompetency.
See Haunted, then; and, more importantly, see the great, decadent Written on the Wind.
Happy Halloween.
Boo, y’all.
Haunted (1995) has those things.
The Sussex estate where most of it takes place is the gorgeous, seldom-filmed Parham Park, here called “Edbrook.” Its Elizabethan manor has dozens of rooms – some grand, some quirky.
Outside the manor are green hills and a pond.
Edbrook is populated by a trio of aristocratic siblings …
… and by their catatonic old servant, Nanny Tess, played by that strange crone, Anna Massey. (Even when she was a not-unattractive starlet in Frenzy and Peeping Tom, she was, well, odd-looking.) The family’s doctor – Sir John Gielgud, in an engaging, gratuitous role – lives nearby.
The plot owes much to Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.” We witness the Edbrook household’s downfall through the eyes of a “parapsychologist,” Professor Ash (Aidan Quinn). He has his own troubles. Many years ago, his kid-sister accidentally drowned. He occasionally glimpses her – or seems to. Is the person he “sees” a different little girl? Is she a ghost? Is she a trick of the mind? Professor Ash takes a skeptical attitude. He’s no supernaturalist; his “fieldwork” consists of infiltrating and debunking séances.
At one such gathering, the word “Edbrook” is murmered, and not long afterward, a letter arrives from that address. It’s a plea for help, on behalf of the disturbed Nanny Tess. Intrigued, the Professor packs up his ghost-detecting equipment and rides a train to the countryside. He is met, at the station, by Christina (Kate Beckinsale), the chatty middle sibling at Edbrook. She drives him to the estate and tells him about her family. Her friendliness takes an unexpected turn when she removes her clothing and jumps into the pond. She is promptly joined by Simon (Alex Lowe), her frivolous younger brother – the “spare.”
Arriving at the manor, Professor Ash notes various nudes of Christina painted by the lordly older brother, Robert (Anthony Andrews, of The Scarlet Pimpernel and Brideshead Revisted, very much in his element).
The siblings’ life at Edbrook would be an uninhibited frolic but for the brooding of Nanny Tess. Alas, the old woman’s meeting with Professor Ash is an abject failure. She continues to “see ghosts.”
Rather than admit defeat and return to his university, the Professor whiles away more days with the lovely Christina.
Her brothers are less welcoming. Simon is always playing obnoxious jokes. Robert is downright unfriendly. He tells the Professor to leave. The Professor stays put. When he isn’t with Christina, he tinkers with his equipment or strolls the grounds. The scenery is pleasant. The light is soft … and yet, somehow, there is a glare. Really, the lighting is extraordinary. Things look lavender without actually being that color, as if persistently touched with a flash-bulb’s after-effect. Everything is perfectly, nightmarishly illumined.
The Professor sees curious things. Then, one stormy night, he falls into the pond. …
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This is a ghost story, yes, but the ghosts are clever window-dressing. Haunted’s objective is to satirize the degenerate rich – or, more precisely, viewers’ lurid obsession with the degenerate rich. The older movie that Haunted channels has nothing to do with ghosts. I’m referring to Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1956): “a perverse and wickedly funny melodrama,” Roger Ebert tells us,
in which you can find the seeds of Dallas, Dynasty, and all the other prime-time soaps. Sirk is the one who established their tone, in which shocking behavior is treated with passionate solemnity, while parody burbles beneath.He goes on:
All the reviews of [Written on the Wind] seem to involve lists: It’s about wealth, alcoholism, nymphomania, impotence, suicide, and veiled elements of incest and homosexuality.A similar list could be made of Haunted’s themes.
To appreciate a film like Written on the Wind probably takes more sophistication than to understand one of Ingmar Bergman’s masterpieces, because Bergman’s themes are visible and underlined, while with Sirk the style conceals the message. His interiors are wildly over the top, and his exteriors are phony – he wants you to notice the artifice, to see that he’s not using realism but an exaggerated Hollywood studio style. …Haunted plays the same game but with a twist. The setting is obviously real and beautiful – too beautiful, in fact. The exaggerated style is up-to-date Masterpiece Theatre, not Old Hollywood. But thematically, things are the same. And where it can get away with it, Haunted duplicates Sirkan imagery, particulary of windblown leaves.
The actors are as artificial as the settings. They look like Photoplay covers, and speak in the clichés of pulp romance. …
The … skyline in an early scene is obviously a painted backdrop. The rear-projected traffic uses cars that are 10 years too old. The swimming hole at the river, where the characters make youthful promises they later regret, is obviously a tank on a sound stage with fake scenery behind it.
If the locations are utterly genuine – and they must be, to follow the Masterpiece Theatre template – then how does the movie tip its hand? How does it declare its fakery? Rather brazenly. By using body doubles. And by showing their faces. Not just once; I dunno, at least three times. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, … you get the idea.
Critics don’t. Every critic I’ve read has suggested that the filmmaking is sloppy. But that just isn’t true. The rest of the movie looks great – even the ludicrous climactic special effects are spectacular in their way. And everything moves along at just the right clip. But the crucial detail is that the body-double “mistake” occurs too many times. It must be deliberate. The director, Lewis Gilbert, made James Bond movies, for goodness’s sake. Those movies aren’t shy about heaping on the cheese, and they’re the opposite of profound; but no one, as far as I know, accuses them of technical incompetency.
See Haunted, then; and, more importantly, see the great, decadent Written on the Wind.
Happy Halloween.
Boo, y’all.
