Grading 10 Popular Hollywood Haunted House Movies

In the real world, we suspect ghosts possibly exist, even if we don’t fully understand why or what causes them. People have paranormal experiences all the time, and there are certainly enough paranormal TV shows following researchers and catching their exploits on camera. Hollywood certainly has no shortage of inspiration to base haunted house movies on.

The question is: just how accurate are these movies portrayed compared to real accounts? Let’s find out. Here is a list of ten popular Hollywood haunted house movies (or, in some cases, franchises) graded according to what they got right and what they got wrong.

1. The Shining (1980)

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Features: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers

Jack Torrance is out of work. At his last job, he was dismissed for manhandling a student, and now, the only job he can get is as a caretaker for a hotel that closes down while winter shuts down the highway.

His wife, Wendy, and son, Danny,  go with him, but Danny suffers from mental issues, likely from parental abuse. There is also a mention that the previous caretaker went nuts and killed his family and himself.

There are actually very few hauntings going on for most of their stay in the sinister hotel. (Which counts as a “haunted house movie” because they’re not just vacationing there, but calling it home for several months.) Much of the film instead dwells on Danny’s psychic gifts (his “shining”).

Things turn scary when Danny wanders into the cursed Room 237 and a female apparition attacks him. (In the annals of paranormal research, there are no cases of ghosts attacking anyone.) Neither Jack nor Wendy make much of an investigation, but Jack later encounters several ghosts from the hotel’s past. From this point, it’s more of a psychological film, and the ghosts try to drive recovered alcoholic Jack back to the bottle.

While the story is par excellence, there’s actually not much evidence that the ghosts are aware they’re dead. Jack’s encounters simply would not happen as the film suggests. People very rarely see ghosts as living beings. Sometimes it happens, like with the case of a group of tourists at the Hannah Mansion in Indiana who got a tour by a person who never existed. Or a plumber at the Drumm Barracks in California who encountered a black man asking for the curator. The curator later said no one else was working that day. But in general, people don’t report ghosts manifesting in such flesh and blood forms.

And although Wendy and Danny should have developed an inkling of the activity in the hotel through several incidents, they never do until it’s too late, which culminates in Jack terrorizing them with an axe to keep them from abandoning him.

Instead, the ghosts merely serve as an ingredient to Jack’s madness. Their activity is limited to keeping Room 237 empty, a mystery bartender only Jack can see, a random mystery glass of Scotch in the bar, and a rash of several sudden ghostly appearances (ie the men in a bedroom, one of whom is wearing a bear costume) during Jack’s murderous tirade. And all those manifestations occur within a very few hours. Even real ghosts know better than to show themselves in quick succession within a short period of time.

Grade: C-

2. Poltergeist franchise (1982-1988)

Director: Tobe Hooper
Features: JoBeth Williams, Heather O’Rourke, Craig T. Nelson, Beatrice Straight

A family’s home is haunted by a host of ghosts. The activity in the house starts simply, a glass of milk shatters, silverware bends, and the furniture moves. The mom is enchanted by the “magic” at first, but a tree soon tries to devour their son, the daughter is sucked into another dimension, and dead bodies start coming up through the ground and up through the foundation of the house.

Up until the tree, the activity is pretty spot on for a suburban haunting, but after that, it grows to absurd proportions and is clearly one of those haunted house movies conjured from the mind of a Hollywood writer.

Grade: D

3. The Insidious franchise (2010-2018)

Director: James Wan
Features: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey

A couple with two boys discovers their son inexplicably enters a comatose state and becomes a vessel for a variety of malevolent entities on the astral plane. While he’s comatose, his parents experience paranormal activity, such as voices and apparitions. After they move, they see apparitions at their new house and call upon paranormal researchers.

So far, the story is pretty spot on, even the investigation aspect of it. But where it deters from reality is that their evidence is a bit too good (it’s usually a bit vaguer), and then there’s the shift from a haunting to focusing on astral projection into the afterlife (“The Further”).

I would have expected the photos to be more blurry and imprecise. The Demon and the Woman in Black are probable, as several haunted houses are reported to have demonic presences, but there is not a single case where a presence follows a person to a new location. It’s usually completely new spirits making themselves known to those with psychic gifts.

However, the real problem lies in the production. In a real-world situation, it would have taken months, if not years, to reach the conclusions the Hollywood haunted house movies in this franchise reach in a few days.

Grade: C

4. The Haunting (1963 & 1999)

The Haunting (1963)
Director: Robert Wise
Features: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn

The Haunting (1999)
Director: Jan de Bont
Featuring: Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Owen Wilson, and Lili Taylor

Hill House has stood for about ninety years and seems to be haunted: its inhabitants have always met strange tragic ends. Now, a scientist has assembled a team of people on the pretense of a sleep study to prove whether or not the house is haunted.

Both the original 1963 movie and the 1999 remake have the same plot, but it’s the first one that veers closer to reality with mostly sounds and spirit writing. It also focuses on its main character instead of the hauntings.

The second movie is more outlandish, with ghosts taking a visual form, the house bending and changing form, and generally becoming more obnoxious. The frequency of appearances and the general absurdities aren’t likely. Where the remake upstages the original, though, is in the incredible sets, but that’s about it. But otherwise, Hollywood took liberties in creating this haunted house movie.

Grade: A (1963 original), F (1999 remake)

5. The Nesting (1981)

Directed by: Armand Weston
Features: Robin Groves, Michael Lally, John Carradine and Gloria Grahame

This is the story of an agoraphobic novelist who rents a rural mansion that she feels is familiar and comes to discover is haunted. The terror begins with a series of frightening dreams, but that can hardly be considered paranormal. When the main character is terrified to climb out on the roof, there is a brief glimpse of a figure.

Thousands of witnesses have seen vague figures that appear and disappear. The movie mostly sticks to the woman’s connection to the house, and while this “psychic link” is exceedingly rare, there are a few cases of people having a link to places they’ve never been to in their lives. For instance, the Harden House episode of Unsolved Mysteries. The owner said she had dreams of being in the house and knowing the murder. Or the “House of Plenty” episode on Sightings. The owner recognized the house from her dreams. She later thought she was the reincarnation of the previous owner.

Of course, the other plot point with ghosts killing people? That just doesn’t happen. (But there have been cases where ghosts have solved their own murders.)

Grade: C

6. Crimson Peak (2015)

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Features: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that lives, breathes, bleeds, and remembers.

Along the way, she sees strange sights, sounds, and activities, all indicative of a haunted house as reported by real experiences. But, again, the spectral appearances come too close together. In real haunted houses, ghosts don’t appear nearly as often or respond to the living nearly as much. And as much as we would hope they do, murder victims don’t avenge their deaths as much as we hope they would.

Grade: C

7. The Changeling (1980)

Director: Peter Medak
Features: George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Melvyn Douglas, Jean Marsh

After the death of his wife and daughter in a car crash, a music professor staying at a long-vacant Seattle mansion is dragged into a decades-old mystery by an inexplicable presence in the mansion’s attic.

For much of the movie, the movie is consistently accurate with its portrayals of voices, visions, and phenomena, even down to the seance and spirit recording. Although apparition cases are exceedingly rare, the scene with the ball does have a precedent. The last ten minutes with the poltergeist at the senator’s home and the astral projection are a bit more far-fetched and more within New Age belief than paranormal research.

Grade: C+

8. House on Haunted Hill (1959 & 1999)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)
Director: William Castle
Features: Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Alan Marshal

House on Haunted Hill (1999) – Director: William Malone
Features: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan

A millionaire offers $10,000 to five people who agree to be locked in a large, spooky rented house overnight with him and his wife. In both the original and the remake, the plot is pretty much the same, and while the original barely has any paranormal activity, the reboot is full of it with apparitions, illusions, psychotic mental images, and strange phenomena.

Pritchett’s claim of “a darkness” isn’t a far-fetched one. It correlates with the belief that all haunted houses have energy created by the living that “fuels” its activity, but the movie gives its energy sentience to assist the ghost of Dr. Blackburn. (Compare this to Legend of Hell House, where the ghost of Belasco manipulates it to stage a multi-layered haunting.) This part is the Hollywood haunted house movie embellishment, as is the ghosts killing people and the structure coming to life.

Grade: No grade (1959 original), D+ (1999 reboot)

9. 13 Ghosts (1960 & 2001)

13 Ghosts (1960)
Director: William Castle
Featuring: Jo Morrow, Rosemary DeCamp, Martin Milner, Donald Woods and Margaret Hamilton.

13 Ghosts (2001) – Director: Steve Beck
Featuring: Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Shannon Elizabeth and F. Murray Abraham

This story sticks to the usual trope of a normal family inheriting a haunted house, which is used in several horror films. But 13 Ghosts is one of the first haunted house movies to actually depict ghosts. Most of the earlier movies only insinuate hauntings (House on Haunted Hill) but never show paranormal activity. The activity in this movie, despite being hokey, is pretty close to “almost accurate,” despite occurring too often.

But the inventions are far-fetched, especially so in the remake. The 2011 movie isn’t so much a haunted house flick as a slasher flick with ghosts and some very creative but unrealistic occult jumps in logic with barrier spells and a “Black Zodiac.”

Loosely put, there is no real way to “trap” ghosts, but some folklore claims that owning possession of deceased people can allow them to visit, an assumption that fits in well with the original 1960 movie.

Grade: C (1960 original), F (2001 reboot)

10. The Legend of Hell House (1973)

Director: John Hough
Featuring: Roddy McDowall, Gayle Hunnicutt, Pamela Franklin, Clive Revill

A physicist, his wife, and two mediums are hired to investigate the Belasco House, where 27 guests inexplicably died in 1927, along with most of a team of paranormal investigators in the early 1950s.

This is probably the king of Hollywood haunted house movies. (The 1963 version of The Haunting reigns as queen.)

There is actually very little haunting activity in this movie, and much of it is directed at actress Pamela Franklin, who hears voices and experiences a phantom stalker and a possessed cat. Much of the activity comes from the psychics, except for a poltergeist attack in the dining room and the seance under scientific restraints.

The script does note the possible link between paranormal activity and electromagnetic energy, and the professor’s machine certainly seems possible. (A variant of this device appears in Scary Movie 2.)

However, some of the activity (the cat and the body in the blankets) and the concept of ghosts killing people are some of the nitpicks I found fault with.

Grade: A-

Check-In

Did these Hollywood haunted house movies receive the right grade, or would you change any?