"Did you die in this house, Joseph?”
A good haunted house movie is an exercise in mood. Haunted house films, more often than not, also tend to be the movies that break through the genre barrier and hit the mainstream. They’re the ones that make people who don’t like horror say, “But I liked that.” THE HAUNTING, THE SHINING, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, POLTERGEIST, many of them are seen as all-time classics, regardless of genre. Yet even in the most prestigious kind of horror, there are titles that fall through the cracks.
THE CHANGELING is my favorite haunted house movie of all time. It is contemplative, aching, kind of a surprising political thriller as the story unfolds, and just genuinely scary. It stars George C. Scott, and that's a genius bit of casting, because he's so gruff that you don't think of him as someone who gets scared, so when he starts to be horrified, we're even *more* horrified as viewers than we would be otherwise.
He plays a composer who moves into a huge, empty mansion after a tragic accident claims the lives of his wife and daughter. It's haunting enough just to watch this man rattling around such a massive space by himself, but then, of course, things begin to happen and he realizes that he is cohabitating this space with the ghost of a young boy. The ghost is almost playful, at first, because he's essentially a lonely kid, but he also wants something, he's restless, and that's where the investigation begins. There are complaints that the political subplot involving a senator drags it down and isn't as necessary to the haunting, but I fully disagree, especially once all is revealed.
Without going too far into it, this ghost is lashing out against a successful, wealthy, fulfilled, long life that was supposed to be his. It is everything he didn't get to have. There's a huge emotional resonance here, and the entire movie is just a stark exploration of the utter unfairness of robbed time.
Plus, it's just plain scary. The seance scene is infamous, and it has my single favorite scare in a movie of the type, which is so simple. John, our hero, sees a ball bouncing down the stairs, and it's the last straw with this haunting, he's had it. So he grabs the ball, drives away, and throws it over the bridge. When he enters the house, he looks up to see the ball bouncing down the stairs again, soaking wet. Masterful stuff.