by Lee Jonathon

Created on: May 19, 2010

Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) enthralled audiences with its minimalist aesthetic. Instead of using special effects and literal depictions, it utilized sound, lighting and shadow. Through manipulating these techniques, Wise was able to create the sense of foreboding and malevolence that emanates from within the movie. The film centers around Eleanor (Julie Harris), Theo (Clare Bloom), Luke (Russ Tamblyn) and Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson) who spend the night in a haunted house, dubbed "Hill House", in an attempt to prove the supernatural.

Ultimately, Wise's film works to subvert the cliched notion of the haunted house scenario, instead of propagating generic conventions, he ambiguously insinuates Eleanor as a key conspirator of the haunting, as she is the only one affected by the supposed spirits. Working to the imagination of the viewer, with the subjective stylistic techniques used. Horror cinema frequently delves into social critique, which are largely ignored, due in part to horror cinema's B-movie status. With creatures that are represented in horror films can usually be seen as what Noel Carroll describes as, "manifestations of what is repressed by the cultures schematizations".

Eleanor's character then - marginalized in society and only free from looking after her mother through her recent death - is akin to the physical embodiment of what the house represents. Herein lies the films genius, it works as an allegory for the forgotten people of society. What contemporary society has charmingly and conveniently described as 'the Other'. Those kept in the shadows become akin to the very monsters the house is supposed to represent. This is noticeable in Eleanor's deepening immersion into the affects of the house upon her. The house, for Eleanor, represents an 'uncanny', that is to say that it feels familiar, yet is unsettling all the same. 

Eleanor is the single most important character in the film. Her symbiotic relationship with the house forces the viewer to consider her role in the incidents that occur throughout the film. Eleanor's repression diminished by her staying at the house emerging from her repressed self, as within the house she is no longer an outsider. When she dies at the climax the ending becomes ever more poignant.

As Rosemary Jackson states, "the fantastic traces the unsaid and the unseen of culture: that which has been silenced and made 'absent'". A quote which encapsulates the Eleanor and Hill House, and further propping the symbiotic nature each share, through society's indifference to the both of them.

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