Fantastic Haunting

The Haunting is somewhat of a mystery when it comes to trying to categorize it as a Horror or a Fantastic film. It has plot developments and traces of horror, but it also has a blatant Fantastic aspect to it. It is widely regarded as an all-time classic film and is “the premier haunted house movie.”
If we first examine the formal elements of the film, the mise-en-scène is quite dramatic and contributes greatly to the supernatural possibilities of the house. First of all, the film is shot in black and white or “film noir” and the use of shadows creates much anxiety in the characters. The only time the characters are frightened or feel threatened is at night, but it seems that darkness, or perhaps danger, is always lurking around every corner. Much like Cat People, The Haunting has a very somber theme and display of those themes. This is done to show the effect that the house has on the people who inhabit it. Another important aspect of the mise-en-scène is the gothic statues that are all over the house. They always serve a function in each scene as though they are watching over or menacing the characters in the film. If the statues are not the focus of a scene, then through deep-focus photography we always see them hovering in the background. Finally, the house itself is reminiscent of a very unwelcoming middle-age castle with dramatic architecture, stone walls, and very formal accoutrements.
The next formal aspect of The Haunting is the mise-en-shot which is one of the main things that have made this film so enduring. The camera position and angle is frequently such that the audience is feeling that maybe the house is turning over on itself. When the audience is intended to feel frightened, we are not only cued to this feeling by the actors, but with “unsettling camera angles” the fear invoked is shown in “icy cold shadow-strewn photography.”
The basic plot of the film begins with a brief history of the house (“Hill House”). The man who built it lost two wives in or very close to the house, his daughter never left her bed and died there as an old woman, and the caretaker of this woman killed herself in the house after living there for a time after the woman died. We are then introduced to Dr. Markway, a psychologist who wants to find out if the house is haunted. He invites Eleanor (the narrator), Theadora, and Luke to help with his experiments. Not much work gets done for Dr. Markway as the group is continuously threatened by the goings on in the house, and Dr. Markway calls the experiment off once he realizes how it has impacted Eleanor. Eleanor is killed on the property grounds as she loses control of the house and the movie is drawn to a close.
According to Noël Carroll, a horror film must generate the art horror emotion from its audience as a result of a threatening and disgusting monster that plagues the protagonists. The monster in The Haunting could potentially be the house, but we do not ever see the confirmation of the evil/supernatural nature of the house. We see the door appear to breathe, we hear loud banging, people that spend a lot of time in the house usually end up going mad, however, we are left somewhat unsure whether Eleanor (the narrator who leads us to the supernatural conclusion) was truly crazy or if the house was truly a home to evil spirits. One important thing to note is that after Dr. Markway pronounces Eleanor dead, we hear her voice as we did when she was alive, and she is telling us that the house is in fact haunted and that she now belongs to the house. However, other events in the film sway us in the other direction; that the house is not haunted rather; the characters’ minds are playing tricks on them. The reason we may be led to believe that the house is not haunted is the fact that the people that die in the film seem to have caused their own deaths or died from natural or man-made causes; the old woman died of old age, one of the builder’s wives died in a carriage accident, the other wife died falling down the stairs (or was she pushed by a spirit?), the caretaker took her own life, and Eleanor wrecked her car into a tree because she did not want to leave Hill House (or did the spirits attempt to take over the wheel?). If The Haunting is in fact a Fantasy film, then it could possibly be that genre in its purest sense; we as the audience are not conclusively informed by the narrative that the happenings are natural or that they are super-natural. We are left to ponder our own conclusion or merely consider both options. If the Haunting is a Horror, then we must conclude that the spirits in the House or the House itself is the monster. However, according to Carroll, most Horrors take on the form of a complex discovery or an over-reacher plot. The haunting does appear to include an experiment gone wrong, which would indicate an over-reacher plot with Dr. Markway or the builder of the house being the over-reacher; however, the characters do not attempt to confront the monster. They either flee for their lives or they, as in the case of Eleanor, give themselves over to be defeated by the house. The house does not seem to be a threat to humanity which would be a necessary component of a Horror. It appears that Hill House is a Fantastic being that humanity must simply learn to live with and hopefully sidestep its influence.