Unlike other reviews have indicated, this is not a sequel, prequel or remake of any of the prior film versions or the classic novel. my personal favorite is the 1963 robert wise version, "the haunting". scared the crap out of me as a child - the doorknobs and the bending walls. russ tamblyn from that version even makes a cameo in this version as well, playing nell's therapist.
anyway, what they did was take all the characters from the story and, instead of making them visiting researchers, made them a family (the crain family - yep, they kind of jettisoned the back story of the house as well). this family moves into the house in hopes of selling it after fixing it up. the story jumps back and forth between their time in the house and later, after the kids are grown up and still suffering from their time spent in the house that's haunted by.....well, something.
their father takes them from the house in the middle of the night without explaining why, and they never go back. just like the book, it's not clear if the haunting is real and if the various members of the family have carried forward the traumas they experienced into their adulthoods. and they're all pretty messed up too. they did manage to fit in some of the more memorable events/scenes from the 1963 film into this one, putting them into the context of this version.
the expansion that a 10 hour version gives is amazing, and each family member pretty much gets their own episode (some dovetail into other character scenes shown from the other character's point of view). i started out not liking the massive changes so much, but really settled into the story (ep 6 is amazing, in my opinion).
highly recommended. it's well written and creepy. though it was played a bit for laughs in the 1963 version, you'll certainly never hear the phrase "in the night. in the dark" the same way again.
