Geoffrey Rush stars as Steven Price, the owner of amusement parks and general all-around-weird who takes pleasure in scaring other people. His money-grubbing wife (Famke Janssen), decides she wants to have a party at the decrepit house on haunted hill for her birthday.  Steven, the loving husband that he is, shreds her guest list and draws up his own and sends out invitations stating that if one of these 4 guests could live through the night, they would get a cashier's check made out to cash in the amount of $1,000,000.  If any person did not make it, the prize would then be divvied up amongst the remaining.  Just to make things interesting, Steven decides to furnish every person in the house with a gun - what fun.

I don't know how this movie got made.  Following close on the heels of 'Haunting,' with an almost identical plot, 'Haunted Hill' fails miserably.  By combining an unimaginative plot with a storyline full of holes, the movie just rambles on and on with no real purpose or direction.  When Mr. Price combines these four unwitting souls in the house, along with the house-keeper/historian, the five of them know that the house is up to something.  They are all scared of the house and the other people in it, yet every five minutes, in scene after scene, after repeatedly stating that they need to stick together, they split apart.  Add ghosts and skeletons and a deceased mad scientist and we're supposed to have a good scare, but unfortunately, 'Hill House' never gets close and is an absolutely horrible film.

'Haunted Hill' does succeed to pick up where 'Haunting' left off adding the blood, guts, and gore that 'Haunting' lacked and effectively earning it's R rating.  The problem is, even this can't make the movie any better.  The only upside is that 'Haunted Hill' manages to pack some good special effects at times, but there isn't really anything the actors or director could do to take this script and make it a good movie.   Had it not been for SNL regular Chris Kattan's sense of humor, the movie would have been a complete waste of $6.50, instead, I'm just thinking of it as a waste of 2 hours and only $5.00.