Hallowatch 2026 No. 27: House on Haunted Hill (1999)
Hey a third Dark Castle. I actually have seen the opening for this before, but I think I turned it off when Lisa Loeb and Spike went to Six Flags. A mistake, there's a fun little rollercoaster of a movie here.
This was kinda trash and I'm amazed there were more Dark Castle movies after this. Fun trash, but trash. I am slightly surprised also that Gothika was a "bigger budget" version of this — House seemed to grab what would otherwise be a fairly stacked cast (Geoffrey Rush, Taye Diggs, Famke Janssen, Chris Kattan) immediately before they broke out, with Peter Gallagher being the only one with a particularly impressive CV going into this at time of filming in '98.
I have trouble writing about roller coaster movies because what is there to say? They're designed to be a thrill ride; it was a thrilling ride. I enjoyed Geoffrey Rush's Vincent Price impression, I think he should do more of that if given the opportunity (though, I suppose he sort of does in the Pirates movies). I was struck by how much Famke Janssen in this looked like Daisy Ridley. The CGI on this was of its time. Imagine if we started doing the WB cartoon-contains-racism disclaimer about "this movie's CGI was kinda buns". "The film you are about to see is a product of its time. It may contain computer generated imagery that was commonplace in theatrically released media. These graphics were crap then and are crap now."
Ultimately, this is an inoffensive haunted house ride. "It's fine".
Rewatch? nah.
Sequel? I don't know why you'd bother
Remake? This feels like the sort of movie that should be remade every ten years with a new cast and new twist ending. ■
