The Haunting 4K 1963 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

While investigating the history of the haunted house, the doctor invites three people to help him with his inquiry. And the history of this house on the hill is terrifying: the owner drowned, his two wives died under mysterious circumstances, and the daughter who inherited the house died after the nurse failed to help her. The nurse herself committed suicide after taking possession of the house. The house welcomes new guests and begins a terrifying game with them.

Review 4K Movie

I’ve wanted to write about this film for a long time, but—as often happens to me—my thoughts kept getting sidetracked by other movies, which managed to completely take over my mind and sweep me away into their own surreal worlds, or even leap onto the back of the White Whale and plunge me to the bottom of an uncharted ocean.
And yet, feeling the scrape on my leg—it won’t heal, it draws my attention—and so I remember which branch I caught on.

But that’s not all. Robert Wise’s creation throws me back much further, several years ago, when I hadn’t the faintest idea about "The Haunting". Instead, I knew another film very well, with the lovely Lily Taylor and the then-sexy Catherine Zeta-Jones, and I liked it.
That was the time when my friend and I would run to the video store and rent a tape for 20 or 30 rubles for the evening, so that, paired with a cup of tea, it would add some substance to our long autumn or winter gatherings that lasted late into the night. These two films have only one thing in common—the name Shirley Jackson, whose novel served as the basis. I don’t know which of the films was closer to the original source, and that’s actually a good thing; since I haven’t read the book, no critical thoughts can attack my brain while I’m watching.

Eleanor Lance, a woman well past her prime whose age is hard to discern from her face—it seems that years of monotony and the burden of caring for her ailing mother have smoothed out the lines and contours of her face and covered them in dust—is invited by Dr. McVeigh, an anthropologist, to investigate the House on the Hill for the presence of ghosts. Now that Eleanor is free from her daily duties following her mother’s death, yet still remains confined by inertia, side by side with her shrewish sister who continues to oppress her and take advantage of her inability to resist her circumstances, this invitation is more than just an adventure for her. Perhaps it is a new life. Thus, a tense, supernatural bond forms between Eleanor and the House on the Hill. The homeless Eleanor has found her refuge, where she is destined to be buried.

In *The Haunting*, the house is a character in its own right, a creature brought to life through mirrors, crooked corners, voices,
rustling sounds recorded long ago and played every night, immersing the four participants in the experiment in its own reality, adjacent to the rest of the world—and first and foremost Eleanor, who has found no place for herself in that world. Ghosts sing along in the background, and a close-up captures a ghostly figure, crowned by their own loneliness.

- I sleep on my left side. It wears out the heart faster that way.

Eleanor can’t shake the guilt for the life of her; all she wants is to stay at the House on the Hill. To become a part of it.

Apart from the finale, one of the most frightening scenes takes place around the tenth minute of the second hour. Eleanor and Theo fall asleep in the same room. Woken by voices, Eleanor clutches Theo’s hand tightly. Her gaze is fixed on the pattern on the wall, in a square of light streaming in from the window; silence, and then voices again, quiet laughter, a child’s cry, Eleanor’s face, terrified, but she doesn’t scream; a quiet horror has frozen her body, it’s reaching me too, maybe it will all pass now... but no, it doesn’t pass; now I’m going to scream...

The creaking of the doors, like a vice or the devil’s fist, squeezes and squeezes Eleanor...

“I’m dissolving inch by inch in this house...”