The Haunting in Connecticut (*)

Directed by: Peter Cornwell
Starring: Virginia Madsen, Kyle Gallner, Elias Koteas, Amanda Crew, Martin Donovan
Seen: July 26th 2009

* Out of ****

Based on true events... The Haunting in Connecticut had my expectations up. Not The Dark Knight up, but at the very least The Amityville Horror up. And where The Amityville Horror was, at least in my mind, a pretty effective film, the Haunting in Connecticut isn’t. This film has one mildly effective scare, about 4 minutes into the film, and then basically nothing for the rest of its 92 minutes runtime.

Things start off with Sara Campbell (Madsen), having to drive her son, Matt (Gallner) to a far-off hospital on a regular basis for cancer treatments. Because of discomfort this causes not only for Matt, but also for the whole family, including their live-in baby-sitter, Wendy (Crew), the family decides to lease a home, which turns out to be, DUM-DUM-DUM, an old funeral home... Matt sees things, but no one else does, not exactly an original plot point, and there seems to be no logical explanation for why the rest of the family can or cannot see what he sees at different intervals.

The film shoots itself in the foot by revealing too much too early, and not at any stage really attempting to keep the suspense building. The gruesome scenes are not kept back as a last moment reveal, but rather thrown into the story from the start out, Matt leans against a pillar and his hand passes through the paint into bloody gore, but it’s gone as he looks again, and Matt has a vision/dream about someone’s eyelids being snipped off with scissors, all almost within the first quarter of the film.

The only redeeming feature of the film is the moments that the family dynamic is displayed, and these are so few and far between that you barely remember them. Speaking of remembering, today is Friday, I saw the film on Sunday, and I had to consult the internet to remember not one, but all of the characters’ names. The Haunting in Connecticut is not a worthwhile film, and I think I would rather have rented The Amityville Horror again if I wanted to see a creepy and rather disturbing small-town haunted-house movie.

This might not be the epitaph director Peter Cornwell was aiming for when he made this, but I can’t see why it deserves anything more...