The Haunting in Connecticut Movie Review

Back in the 1920s, the gloomy funeral parlor also doubled as a meeting place for bereaved kin wishing to connect just one last time, via séance, with their dear-departed family members. Although the clairvoyant undertaker and his teenage son Jonah (Erik J. Berg)  are long dead, the residue of their dangerous spirit-tampering remains seeped and steeped into the very floorboards of the home.

 

When we catch up in present day, the rental property is quickly occupied by the Campbell family because of its proximity to their teenage son Matt's (Kyle Gallner) oncologist, Dr. Brooks (D.W. Brown). Matt is in the advanced stages of cancer, and if he doesn't get daily treatment while convalescing at home his death is almost certain. (Of course, little do they know at first that his death is almost certain anyway, thanks to the ghost of the other teenage boy.)

 

Mom Sara (Virginia Madsen) and Matt are the first to arrive, and the gaunt, sickly boy is quickly drawn to the spacious, chilly basement, insisting that it's the perfect room for him because it's temperate, quiet, and has its own bathroom, which means he can purge in the middle of the night without everyone else in the family hearing him heave.

 

"Everyone else" includes Matt's dad, Peter (Martin Donovan), a cousin roughly his age Wendy (Amanda Crew), and his two young siblings Mary and Billy (Sophi Knight, Ty Wood). While Peter continues to toil away in the city to pay the ever-mounting medical bills, Sara and the kids contend with the strange goings-on in the house while also trying to deal with the more organic specter of death: cancer.

 

The Haunting in Connecticut should help to quell the cries of protest from PG-13 horror haters, as it not only avoids the usual CW Network style casting, it steers clear of long-haired wet girl-ghosts and it's absolutely unblinking in its reveals. For those who wish they'd "show it!" The Haunting in Connecticut is for you: We see the ghosts, and how. Fortunately, the special effects makeup and CGI is mostly very well-done. If anything the movie is too explicit, leaving nothing to the imagination. (However, it's definitely PG-13: no cursing, no nudity, no illegal drug-taking.)

 

Embracing the conventions of the long-standing haunted house genre, there are lots of strange noises, boo's in mirrors, electricity failures, kids playing hide-n-seek at the worst possible times, people snooping around the basement and attic, and of course, we have The Thing Under The Bed. However, it's not just a bunch of scares strung together: screenwriters Adam Simon (Ernest R. Dickerson's Bones) and Tim Metcalfe (Dominic Sena's Kalifornia) took pains to make sure the audience sympathizes with the family's agony. Aside from a couple of eyeball-rollers — Dad's decent into alcoholism, especially during an out-of-nowhere electric guitar-playing scene, is pretty heavy-handed — our protagonists are more than just phantom-fodder.

 

The haunted house itself is interesting. It's not as iconic as, say, the creepily crooked Bates home or the infamous Dutch Colonial at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, but it's unpleasant. Not ostentatiously ugly, but just derelict enough to be a believable fixer-upper that someone might actually rent if the price were right. Furnished with an aggressive, forceful score by Robert J. Kral and drab, craggy cinematography by Adam Swica, this is one house that's all right to visit… but you wouldn't want to live there.

 

The movie, while perhaps a tad too unremitting and pat, is as a whole exactly everything it's advertised to be, and more: there's a genuinely intriguing subplot which takes place in the 1920s, some rather squirm-inducing slice scenes, plus an interesting turns of events towards the end.

 

If you are looking for a classic ghost story with a modern sensibility, The Haunting in Connecticut is in move-in condition.

 

= = =