(Review originally written at 25 February 2003)
The makers try very hard to create a "The shining" like atmosphere with long and many camera shots of the haunted house, but they fail. Too bad, because it had a promising story.
A group of people with psychic powers are investigating an old house that is known to be haunted. Sounds like enough good material to make a good scary movie with you would say. However the mini-series never comes even close of being scary and the characters are disappointing.
Nancy Travis is a horrible choice as leading character and David Dukes (RIP) also can't seem to act. The only actor that gives a good performance is Julian Sands and because of that his character is the only believable one. The character of Emery (Matt Ross) is good and funny in the beginning, however later on his character suddenly becomes very unrealistic and even irritating at some points. Annie (Kimberly J. Brown) also get on my nerves after a while, all she does is look "cute" and stretch out her arms every now and then to touch a ghost.
The series starts incredibly slow and only gets interesting the moment they arrive at the house but after that it's going down hill again. One of the weirdest things to me is that for the characters it seems that everything that is happening in the house is very normal. Moments after the had an encounter with a ghost they are dancing, singing and eating pizza like nothing ever happened.
And the ending leaves more questions then answers.
Maybe with a different cast and crew the series would have been better. Only watch this for the nice Stephen King cameo.
4/10
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