The Haunting

Robert Wise adapts Shirley Jackson and commits fully to the one rule that matters: the audience never sees it. A door bulges inward. Something enormous walks the corridor at night and is never identified. A hand holds Eleanor's in the dark, and then the lights come on.

The film is really about Eleanor, who has spent eleven years nursing her mother and has nowhere to go. The house offers her the first sense of belonging she has had, and that is the actual horror of it. Julie Harris plays her with an anxiety that makes some viewers want to look away for reasons that have nothing to do with ghosts.

The 1999 remake renders everything in CGI and frightens nobody, which is the most useful demonstration of this film's method available.