The movie is based on a novel by Shirley Jackson titled "The Haunting of Hill House". Jackson also wrote The Lottery.
This black and white film offered much more than I expected. I think black and white films are much more suspenseful than color "reproductions" and I'm glad that Turner Entertainment decided to maintain the original black and white when they released this film in 2003.
The movie is full of suspense and is plenty scary, but is absent of the blood and gore that would be included if the movie was re-made today. The movie suggests killing and gore, but doesn't have any "in your face" violence.
I liked it.
I'm so frustrated today.
I've been working on a new effort for several months and everything was moving along nicely, but over the course of the past couple of weeks I've become "stuck".
It appears that in my attempt to avoid writing about murder and killing in my thriller/suspense story, I've ended up with a boring and anti-dramatic story that is not really believeable.
In my story, the main character kidnaps an old girlfriend and then releases her a couple of days later. He did the kidnapping to see what it was like and as practice for future kidnappings. Later in the story he kidnaps a young child with intentions of receiving a ransom from his old employer, who is also the child's grandfather.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that this particular plot line will not hold a reader's attention for very long. In my attempt to eliminate violence and murder from my story, I've ended up with a boring story.
Don't get me wrong, I read a lot of suspense/thriller novels that include killing and murder (all of them actually). But, I would like to write a novel that is a suspense/thriller genre that doesn't contain murder and killing. Is it even possible?
