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why the house want paul and ariel to success?

posted 16 years ago by dhaniyes
12 replies | jump to latest

I watched the whole movie and I thought the house (and whatever inside it) wanted to kill Ariel and Paul. But why Paul said that the house want them to succeed get the statue in the end of the movie? Were the house and its inhabitants dislike being captived in the idol's evil charm? Is that so, why they became evil too instead being nice and helpful ghost like the little girl on Ghost Ship?

I would appreciate any answer about it. Thank you

[–] novastar_6 16 years ago

I don't understand this whole mess either because IF the ghosts in the house want the evil to stop, why are they killing everybody they come across? And why, if the house could open up the house for Ariel to get back in again, why couldn't they remove the statue themselves and destroy it?

[–] mokienatrix 14 years ago

Ariel theorizes at the end that the house (/its ghosts) wanted to rid itself of the evil statue, which is presumably powerful enough to stop those in its thrall from doing the deed themselves. The crazyfolk ghosts being free to take on Vannacutt after its removal is meant to support this.

In other horror stories using the accursed item schtick, the item itself often wants to be moved--its isolation is a trap, so it finds a way to lure in a bunch of saps to free it. That would have made more sense here, as it would have emphasized the evil power of the statue instead of the wanking on about the evil of the place and then negating that with a tidy "Oh, it was just the statue all along."

[–] mel2000 (259) 3 years ago

IF the ghosts in the house want the evil to stop, why are they killing everybody they come across?

The main plot is creaky. I find it odd that everyone in the house except Paul and Ariel were there to remove the statue from the house. So there would be no reason for the ghosts to discourage the others from removing the statue.

[–] feed_the_ego 15 years ago

Ariel was related to the main character in the 1st movie... Sara... Sara pretended to be Jennifer who was a decent of one of the orderlies that got out when the house caught on fire. Sara escaped and later on obtained the journal of Vannacutt... Needless to say; The house was pissed!

http://darkcastle.spectre-realm.net

[–] novastar_6 15 years ago

And just WHO is running the house? Dr. Vannacutt? The patients? Who? And why is Vannacutt alone here? What happened to the other doctors and nurses from the first movie?

[–] maniacdemon 15 years ago

As stated in the film, the inhabitants are being forced to relive their last living moments over and over. Since most of the deaths were gruesome and painful, when they are attacking the living characters, that is why they kill them. The house itself is part of the idol (the idol is the house's heart). The inhabitants want Paul and Ariel to succeed so that their souls may rest in peace instead of violence and pain, but the house (the idol) and Vannacut (the servant of the idol) don't.

As for the doctors and nurses, we see one of the nurses pushing the wheelchair with one of the thugs in it, but you're right....they really cut back in this one.

[–] novastar_6 15 years ago

AND, the patients are killing whoever they come across because they're reliving their brutal deaths? Then why does that one patient in pajama bottoms actually try and help them get to the idol to get rid of it? And just WHAT was with that nurse? I've said it before, they made her look like a demented Betty Boop, WHY?! Does Dr. Vannacutt look like he came out of Frankenstein's lab? No...he doesn't look like he did in the first movie but he looks relatively normal. In the first movie, the other staff members all looked very normal, very professional, very much like it was still the 1930s so where the hell did that freak come from?

[–] kevinkelly-4 15 years ago

Obviously spirits don’t age well! I figured this movie was going to be like most sequels that ride on the coattails of their predecessor. We really aren’t introduced to the tormented patients in the first movie other than occasional flashes. We get a good feel for the dastardly Dr. Vannacutt, but that’s about it. You’re right though, this sequel lacked the sophistication of our first visit to the house in 1999. One would guess the producers went straight for the jugular this time around due to lack of star power, BUT it does make the point that less is more. The “House” left a lot to the imagination on our first visit, where our second visit showed it all to us in living color. Proving our imaginations can be 1000 times worse than what we see.

Why did the house want Paul and Ariel to succeed? Have you ever seen a ghost movie where the spirits didn’t want to cross over (or had to be pushed) to the other side? Remember at the end of the first movie, Sara was already outof the house and on the ledge as the Big Ugly was about to consume Eddie, but the spirit of Watson Pritchett (Chris Kattan) is able to separate from Big Ugly (who just ate him 2 minutes earlier) and pulled the lever allowing Eddie access to the ledge just in time. Mr. Pajama Bottoms acted in the same way. He gave Ariel the clues she needed to remove the talisman from the heart of the house, therefore setting the angry patients that the house fed off of free. Maybe some patients or victim refused to submit totally to the evil.

[–] novastar_6 15 years ago

However while we're on the subject WHERE IS the darkness? There was NOTHING in this movie that was in the first. Where are the skeletons in the basement? Where's the tank of blood? The saturation chamber? And when lockdown starts Desmond goes to the main control room, but in the first movie Price confirms that THERE IS NO CONTROL ROOM! And the lockdown mechanism operates up at the top so WHY do they go to the basement? And where the hell did the moat come from? And the crematory?

[–] mokienatrix 14 years ago

"Hey, anybody else here make their living with thrills'n'chills for the kiddies?"

The movie makes the point (repeatedly) that you can't really trust what Price tells you--he has his own agenda. He also has his own control room, as the movie shows us, with a lackey monitoring what happens in the house.

And from the script:
SARA: "Pritchett, this 'lockdown' thing -- it's gotta have like a master control -- you know machinery, gears, whatever -- somewhere in this place?"

PRITCHETT: "The basement -- but, believe me, you don't want to go down there."

And later in the script: "Pritchett and Price stand in the 'Lockdown' control room, staring at a rusted lever that Price has snapped off."

(See for yourself: http://sfy.ru/?script=house_on_haunted_hill )

So yes, the 1999 film did have a control room in the basement, and that's why THEY went to the basement originally as well; they went up to the mechanism directly after the basement proved to full of unhelpful dead things.

[–] novastar_6 14 years ago

The script also had Christopher Lee hosting the show in the beginning and Eddie dies and Sara and Pritchett get out alive, so obviously you can't believe everything IT says either.

They come back up from the basement, Price says there's no control room, and Pritchett who is only TOO happy to offer information about the whole damn house, never denies that statement.

[–] mokienatrix 14 years ago

Except that's the reason they venture down into the basement--to find the main control room after the house goes into lockdown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shXqSGbwT-o (around the 9 minute mark)

Price doesn't say that there's no control room, Price says that he wasn't involved in the attack because he was with Pritchett searching for the master control, "which doesn't seem to exist"--i.e., which he couldn't find. He's not saying there's no control room, but that he couldn't find it. That's here, around the 4 minute mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34I3V5m3P1I

Prichett doesn't contradict him because Pritchett warned them before they went down that it'd be hard to find, because that part of the house has never been cleaned up/renovated, so it's about what he expected to happen--they came back empty-handed.