I know, I say that constantly. It's true.

Despite a plot that really is banal and wasteful (I thought the 1958 version was lacking as well sans the performance of Vincent Price), the makers manage to cram the film with some nicely disturbing images - including a raucously creepy mental institution segway. Though we're watching good-looking folk run around in the dark, being creeped out by "the house", and, though the turn this one takes is more for the supernatural than the one-note con job the original was - it's still a film substituting special effects for what it's missing in frights.

Snazzy idea to put Geoffrey Rush in the Vincent...er, Richard Price role - even snazzier to put Chris Kataan in the Elisha Cook, Jr. role as the drunken occupant of the house, Pritchard. Tough film not to wade through, without your brain, of course - but rather still - the kind of horror fare, unlike actual scare-fests, or really boring art-direction fests ('The Haunting', I'm looking in your direction) that you can just set your brain on vegetate and be entertained for a brief ninety-five minutes, even if you know you're watching manipulation in it's purest form : the modern horror film.

Yeah, I'm sitting on the fence on this one.