The Haunting (1999 film)

The Haunting is a 1999 remake of the 1963 horror film of the same name. Both films are based on the 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. The Haunting was directed by Jan de Bont and stars Liam Neeson, Catherine ZetaJones, Owen Wilson and Lili Taylor. It was released in the United States on July 23, 1999.

Crain built the house for his wife, hoping to populate it with a large family of children however, all of Crains children died during their birth. Crains wife Renee killed herself before the house was finished and Crain became a recluse. After the story, Marrows assistants face is slashed by a snapped clavichord wire. The freak accident causes Marrows research assistants to leave. Nell begins to suspect that it was no accident, as she notices that the wire was unwound by someone or something. Theo and Nell begin to experience unusual happenings within the house, such as a mysterious force trying to open the door to harm them, Nell starts seeing ghosts of children in curtains and sheets, Hugh Crains wood portrait morphs into a skeletal face and is vandalized with the words Welcome Home Eleanor written in blood. Theo and Luke try to establish their innocence, but Nell tells them that they dont know her.Nell becomes determined to prove that the house is haunted by ghostly children who are only terrorized and killed by Crains cruelty. She learns that Crain kidnapped the children from his cotton mills and slaughtered them, then burned their own bodies in the fireplace, trapping their ghosts and forcing them to remain with him, providing him with an eternal family. She also learns that Crain had a second wife named Carolyn, from whom she is descended. Dr. Marrow is skeptical of Eleanors claims, until he realizes he made a horrible mistake by bringing them to Hill House when a statue tries to drown him in a pool of water in a greenhouse. After several more terrifying events, Nell insists that she cannot leave the ghosts of the kids to suffer for eternity at Crains hands. Trying to convince the obviously mentallyunbalanced Eleanor to leave the house with them, Theo offers to let Nell move in with her, but Nell reveals her relation to Carolyn and claims she must help the children to move on to the afterlife. ........

Source: Wikipedia