The Haunting/YMMV


 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The statue of Hugh Crain trying to drown Dr. Marrow in the remake (in a fountain of blood, no less). He doesn't get a chance to explain what happened to him due to Nell screaming, and the event is never mentioned afterward.
 * Complete Monster: Hugh Crain, child-killer extraordinaire, in the remake, though Nell does say at one point after she's connected to the house and its ghosts that Crain "just wanted children, but it all went wrong", implying he wasn't always so. The original book and film also portray him as rather cruel to his daughter, but they don't give enough details on him to really make a call on this front.
 * Esoteric Happy Ending: For the remake--Hugh Crain is banished to Hell, the children's ghosts are freed to go to Heaven, and the haunting is presumably ended. But Luke dies,, and Marrow's experiment was ruined and never finished. The movie ends with Mr. Dudley's rhetorical question, "Did you find what you were looking for?" that Marrow can't answer...so was it all worth it?
 * Fridge Brilliance: Initially the fact the doors were the only way to defeat Crain comes off as a perfect example of Fridge Logic and poor writing--why would Crain include in his own house the very thing that would defeat him, and before he ever became a malevolent ghost, no less? But if you take into account Crain's Holier Than Thou attitude from the novel (and his book of morality for his daughters), the doors make sense as yet another example of his fixation upon being one of the Moral Guardians with a stern belief in a Fire and Brimstone Hell. What he didn't count on, then, was that God would work through those very doors to end his reign of terror and mete out proper punishment.
 * Hell Is That Noise
 * Narm: A lot of the dialogue, particularly Marrow and Luke's awkward conversation in the hallway at midnight, his inane "I wonder what happened to him" in reference to Crain's statue, and much of Nell's dialogue during her final confrontation with Crain.
 * Nightmare Fuel: The overall paranoia in the original (culminating with Nell going completely insane) and the Mind Screw of the house in the remake.
 * The scene in the mirrored carousel room has some genuinely disturbing shots of Nell/Carolyn wherein she has lost all sense of who she is, and her own face is replaced in the mirror by Carolyn's. Both Carolyn seeming happy to be given flesh once more and her stretched, distorted face a few moments later count as a Nightmare Face.
 * Paranoia Fuel: About halfway through the film you begin to wonder - is there really a spiritual force attacking the house and its inhabitants...or is it all just happening in their minds?
 * At least in the first film because the remake makes it painfully obvious that the house is possessed.
 * Special Effects Failure: The remake has ridiculous CG up the wazoo, not to mention horribly outdated CG.
 * Spiritual Licensee: The Remake may be the closest we'll ever get to having a 7th Guest movie.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Two of them in the remake! Both the "fake sleep study that is actually a fear study" (and the ethical nature thereof) and the investigation to discover the nature of the haunting and how to end it are intriguing plots...but combining them in one movie and not allowing either the full time to be developed causes both to suffer.