Watched Apr 8, 2026 ****1/2 stars
Horror365Challenge 102/365: The Haunting (1963)
Pareidolia: "the human tendency to perceive familiar patterns, most commonly faces, in random or ambiguous visual stimuli, such as clouds, rock formations, or everyday objects."
Holy smokes, a young Russ Tamblyn (Dr. Jacoby from Twin Peaks)!
This haunted house story is probably responsible for inspiring Hell House, The Shining, House of Leaves, and a few others. It plays very well with the ideas of pareidolia, superstition, paranormal activity, and psychosis, forcing the audience to decide what they think really happened. Did Eleanore go crazy and lose her mind, or was the house really haunted and some spirit really drove her into that tree? Each of the other final four survivors offers the viewer their own interpretation of the events, while the shadow in the tower of the final shot seems to offer its own idea. I know some folk’s knee-jerk reaction is to call this boring or a nothing-burger, but they would be forgetting their history of when this movie came out and what movies were capable of then. If you want the more active, more overt, paranormal ghost story, watch the 1999 The Haunting instead. I still gotta say this is a great movie, that really climbs in your head with you and messes around with what you're thinking the whole time.
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