The Haunting in Connecticut

In THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT, the Campbell family moves into a former funeral home (!) in order to be closer to the doctor of their terminally ill son. They're unaware that their new home was once the site of unspeakable acts of necromancy.

Now, the former victims of these violations are out to make their presence known.

This movie exceeds expectations. The story is engaging, the characters are believable, and the ghouls are original. Virginia Madsen plays the tormented Mrs. Campbell with the perfect balance of familial love and growing terror. Kyle Gallner is Matt, who gets one of the most memorable scenes in this or any other supernatural tale!

Definitely worth a look...

"Based on a true story". I've now begun to take things with a pinch of salt, because those five words more often than not just tries to give a horror film some street cred, trying to deflect some knuckles of familiarity by claiming that it's something experienced versus something dreamt up. I have one of my own too (that happened to someone else), which is based on a creepy mirror bought from Thailand being hung in a room, and thereafter a child continuously claiming that she sees a man standing by the window licking an ice cream every night. while the mom didn't and couldn't see anything, she got freaked out nonetheless. This stopped when the mirror got covered up and locked in a cupboard.

But there you go, a premise of a horror film in itself, involving a home, a parent, a kid and a (benign) ghostly apparition. The House in Connecticut follows those like Amityville Horror, Psycho, Poltegeist and the likes, even shades of The Shining too if you please. It's centered upon a house which is dirt cheap in rent, but only because of the things that go bump in the night, given its dark and ugly past which Sara Campbell (Virginia Madsen) decides to take no heed of, in order to house their family close to the hospital where cancer-stricken son Matt (Kyle Gallner) has to undergo frequent therapy.

For starters, the film has a relatively strong introduction, where once you got by the rather creepy opening credits, you're introduced to the family proper. After all, it's a story about a family's ordeal (remember those 5 words?) with the supernatural, which initially got you suspecting whether it's all in Matt's hallucinating mind since he's under some strong medication, and of all places decide to make the basement into his room, complete with the set from Hostel with macabre tools complementing the decor.

But what I like about the film, is how it plays up on beliefs, such as children being able to see and somewhat interact with their "invisible friends", or for those at the brink of death given an ability to see extra things within their field of vision, since they're only a stone's throw away to the other side. In fact, this aspect plays up a lot more as the film goes on, since the potential exorcist, Reverend Popescu (Elias Koteas) happens to be Matt's fellow patient, and serves as consultant to piece together the teenager's findings of newspaper clippings, photographs, and well-preserved body parts.

Like all decent horror films, this one comes with the requisite backstory which provides the rationale why the place has additional inhabitants, suffice to say that it's a reminder never to tempt fate or play with fire, and to pick your choice of homes carefully, never one that used to be a mortuary for example. But while the family angle was off the blocks in a strong start, it whimpered toward the end by bringing in a wasteful tangent dealing with Peter Campbell's (Martin Donovan) inability to handle mounting debt pressures that his family now find themselves in.

Technically, the film scored an ace, utilizing a full repertoire of sudden movements and appearances, extreme close ups, smoke and mirrors, banging doors and flashing lights to great effect. While these may not be something that's not already clichéd, and in truth being innovative and original is getting extremely tough, these tried and tested moments still worked somehow under Peter Cornwell's direction in building anticipation, just waiting for something expected to happen became part of the fun.

The Haunting in Connecticut is yet another creepy house story that's fortunately still slightly above average, where the fun factor would come with watching this with a full house of squeamish teenagers who would scream at just anything that moves.

Matt Campbell (Kyle Gallner) has a terminal cancer and is submitted to an experimental treatment in the St. Michael's Hospital Goatswood in Connecticut. The responsible for the trial, Dr. Brooks (D.W. Brown), advises that if Matt starts seeing things, he should drop the experiment. His religious mother Sara (Virginia Madsen) drives almost eight hours with her son since he has nausea and needs to vomit during the travel. She proposes her husband Peter (Martin Donovan), who had trouble with booze, to rent a house in Connecticut to be close to the hospital despite their second mortgage. Sara finds an old house with an affordable price and she questions the catch to the owner and he explains that the house has a history, since it was a funeral home in the past. Sara hides the truth from Peter and the family moves to the house. While in the treatment, Matt befriends Reverend Popescu (Elias Koteas), who has also cancer. When Matt has weird visions and nightmares from the past, he calls Popescu that tells him that an evil entity is trapped in the house and they are able to see him because they are in the borderline of the worlds of the living and the dead.

"The Haunting in Connecticut" is an above average movie of haunted house since it blends a very well developed family drama with spooky scenes of a ghost story. There are many realist situations like the bad financial situation of the Campbells that are usually forgotten in American movies. Further, there is a beautiful message of faith, and Sara truly believes that God works in a mysterious way. The drinking problem of Peter and how it affected the relationship with Sara is just glanced and could be better explored. I do not like the sensationalism that highlights on the cover of the DVD that the story is based on a true event since this movie is better than that. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Evocando Espíritos" ("Evoking Spirits")

A creepy film with enough jump scares to make it a great movie to watch on Halloween. Creepy, Creepy, Creepy, Creepy. Ok here is some more creepy, creepy, creepy.

It's a "Keeps you guessing while scared," kind of a movie. We really liked it.