The Haunting in Connecticut

I made a deal with myself a long time ago that, whenever I would watch a horror movie of which I know from beforehand that I probably end up hating it, I would try to keep an open mind and avidly search for at least one positive aspect! This can be almost anything, except for gratuitous boobs on display (too easy), but I'm primarily hoping for at least one innovative plot aspect or surprising story twist. My expectations for "The Haunting in Connecticut" were set very low, because this production clearly features a number of clichéd elements that I dislike the most: paranormal entities in an abandoned house, supposedly based on a true story (yeah, right…), probably copious amounts fake scares and predictable "boo!"-moments and an overload of irritating PG-13 approved digital effects. Yes, the film does feature all the above mentioned stuff, but to my surprise it was still relatively easy to find the innovative plot aspect! To my knowledge and unless if I'm overlooking a certain title – which is always possible with more than 3.500 reviewed horror movies - "The Haunting in Connecticut" is the first movie I've seen that makes a connection between terminal illness and being a paranormal medium. The protagonist, teenager Matt Campbell, suffers from a deadly form of metastatic cancer, and the fact that he continuously balances on the edge of life and death apparently makes him more receptive for paranormal activities. It's definitely not a world- shocking new twist to the ghost-movie sub-genre, but at least I found it acceptable. Since Matt can't physically handle the long car trips between their house and the specialized cancer clinic, his devoted mother Sara rents an extra house in Connecticut. The family can hardly finance this, but they stumble upon a large house that is very cheap due to its past as a funeral home with a macabre history. Matt immediately begins to see nightmarish things, like corpses with strange carvings all over and their eyelids cut off. Together with his older sister and a local priest, also a cancer patient, they dig up the house's history and discover that the original mortician – Mr. Aickman – also used the basement to organize séances. His young assistant Jonah was an exceptional medium who even produced ectoplasm, but one of the séances went horribly wrong and killed all participants including Aickman. Jonah's restless soul, as well as those of hundred others, are still inside the house and now manifest themselves through Matt. Poor kid… As if dying from cancer and struggling through sickening special treatments isn't miserable enough already, he also has to face malevolent Connecticut ghosts! I didn't make any efforts to find out elements of the script are truthful and what others are fictionalized (the latter probably counts for 99%), but at least I can honestly state that this was one of the least annoying haunted-houses/paranormal entities movies that I watched since the new Millennium. I admit I'm a sucker for spooky old photographs and atmospheric black/white flashbacks set in the 1920s/1930s period, so "The Haunting in Connecticut" gains a couple of extra points for featuring this, and the special effects were adequate too. The film has a more than decent cast, with the lovely Virginia Madsen ("Candyman") as the concerned mother and Elias Koteas as the helpful priest. There's a sequel already, set in Georgia this time, and another one upcoming set in New York. After that I assume there will be 47 more of these movies, one for each state.

I really did hesitate to see this movie because I had not seen many that have interested me since the days of Poltergeist - one exception being The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I loved both despite the obvious difference in style.

I found The Haunting In Connecticut disturbingly fun. It definitely had its own style which at times made me wonder when the signs of it bombing were going to appear. I think that was part of why I enjoyed it because it never did disappoint me. This mixture of reality and the supernatural kept me on the edge of my seat. Was it the trauma of cancer causing so much grief for this family or the chilling(yet burning), hidden secrets of the dead in this funeral home that kept expectations from settling on one aspect or the other? The fact is both were enough to draw attention away from the other while we try to make our own conclusions.

An innocent, everyday family deals with the possible, yet probable death of young Matt, who at times suffers excruciatingly from dealing with the unknown and death that he is convinced is his destiny. Squeezed between what is and may be real was enough, but then deal with the likes of a stranger who claims to be a reverend...c'mon, this is classic stuff. You can't take all this in without suffering a little, especially when the family itself starts to fall apart when they need to stick together.

While there are some questions that may not be answered, the story itself was more than satisfying. Special effects were kept to a minimum but used effectively and when needed. Acting was not Oscar worthy but good enough to make it all seem real. Fun when you want it and scary when you need it.

It's definitely a 7/10

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")

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

"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.