THE HAUNTING (1999) **1/2 Fun, somewhat scary, but ultimately frustrating because it should have been so much better. Lili Taylor is great, she gets so into her roles that she goes into another world, which is good because she never could have scared us in the one that Jan de Bont creates. Every facial gesture, every nuance is that of a terrifying psyche quite literally at home in the fragmented gothic astral layer subaura of the spirit world somehow connected to a New England mansion replete with carousel. Unfortunately the film only works when Taylor's the only person in it for extended periods of time. The support is weak, Catharine Zeta-Jones might be believable as some sort of artist or another but as a sex-crazed libertine she doesn't even remember to seduce Owen Wilson or Liam Neeson, and she obviously lacks the intellectual firepower or spiritual development to be of any intest to Taylor. You can't say that the special effects are bad: in fact they are very good. Unfortunately they're played repeatedly, and yet somehow at odd inappropriate moments, with the result that you feel more like you're at a special effects seminar ("and this is what you can do with cherubic heads swirling through the wind in the curtains") than in a cosmic drama with potentially dire repercussions. Nice early turn by Marian Seldes in a monologue about "at night, in the dark."