Format: DVD from Manteno Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.
I tend to be leery of remakes. There are plenty of remakes that are good, of course. The John Carpenter version of The Thing, for instance, or The Fly. Even The Maltese Falcon is the third version of that story brought to the screen. However, more often than not, remakes are worse than the original version. I was doubly nervous when it came to the remake of House on Haunted Hill. That trepidation can be summed up in two words: Chris Kattan. I stand by my opinion that no movie featuring Chris Kattan or Rob Schneider can be any good. That this is actually Kattan’s best performance doesn’t say much, but actually does work slightly in the film’s favor.
The basic set up here is kind of the same. We have a rich couple, in this case Steven (Geoffrey Rush) and Evelyn Price (Famke Janssen). As in the original film, these two are married, but just barely in the sense that they actively hate each other, but for some reason are not divorced. It’s a running gag between them that they’d like to kill each other. As an added bonus this time, Steven Price, rather than being randomly rich, runs a group of fear-based amusement parks.
