There’s a strange kind of pride that many people take in not being frightened by certain celebrated horror films. “Oh, it’s not scary at all,” they’ll say loftily about The Shining or The Exorcist or The Babadook, as if they’ve somehow outsmarted the film and the other, weaker viewers it worked on, all still cowering too much to give the holdout’s smug bravery the shrug it merits. Scariness, in addition to being wholly subjective, is not exactly a value judgement. There are any number of shoddy identikit slashers out there that can make an otherwise discerning viewer jump in all the right places; there are likewise many smart, artful horror films that may not elicit much more than a stray shiver, but stick with you in other ways. Which of those you value more is your call.
Classic horror films are frequently subjected to this kind of dismissal by modern audiences – the contemporary limitations on their violence or explicitness or special effects too often taken for a timidity that outweighs whatever psychological weaponry they may yield. But The Haunting, released 60 years ago this week, has been weathering such taunts since it was brand-new. Director Robert Wise and screenwriter Nelson Gidding’s leisurely, elegant adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 literary ghost story wasn’t much of a hit: reviews were respectable but cinemagoers were underwhelmed by its slow-burning storytelling and curtailed shocks.
