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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.

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.

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

Basically this movie is like a more gruesome haunted house tale than the original Amityville or a less gruesome haunted house tale than the Amityville remake. However, the movie most certainly follows the flow of those two movies. I would have actually given this movie a six, but they kept trying to make out like this story was pure fact and that rather ticked me off, I mean what do they take me for a moron. I know a bit about the story it is taken from and there are so many differences it is pathetic. I realize that you have to add some stuff or the movie is going to be kind of boring, heck I am even for embellishing the story to the degree this one did, but do not have the this serious voice over telling me how this is true and have the writing at the end tell an out right lie. So what is the story you ask? Well a teenage boy has cancer and his mother is having to drive him a great distance quite often for a special treatment. Mother decides to find a place to rent closer to the place the son gets treatments so he does not have to endure the long drive in pain and vomiting. Of course, the family's financial situation is not to good so when the house with the history comes up for rent you know our family is going to make that their new stomping ground. So spooky reflections and such start to take place as well as strange visions and we even have a reverend enter the picture to give our youth guidance. So yes, the typical haunted house formula is here. Add in a pointless stretch of film where the father drinks and you have your movie, though I am betting that part of the film is actually true, but they changed so much around why not just omit that part all together as it really did not bring anything to the film. So I say add some more scares, perhaps a little gore, do not try to pass off the movie as being a reenactment or something and this film might have been really good...just like a lot of horror movies it is usually might have is it not?