The Haunting in Connecticut
(2009) 92 Min.
Rated: PG-13
Country: USA / Canada
Director: Peter Cornwell
Starring: Virginia Madsen, Martin Donovan, Elias Koteas
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
A family moves into a house that has a dark past and is full malevolence.
Synopsis:
It’s 1987 and Sara Campbell (Madsen) must drive her sick son Matthew home from his cancer treatments at the hospital far away. Sara and her husband Peter (Donovan), a recovering alcoholic, discuss renting or buying a new property closer to the hospital for Matthew.
One day as she’s driving home with Matthew she sees a man placing a For Sale sign outside of a large home. Matthew is very sick and she convinces the man to let them move in right away.
They spend a fairly restful night in the house, though Matthew is awakened by sounds. The rest of the large family soon moves in, despite Peter’s hesitation.
As the kids get to choose their rooms, Matt decides he wants to stay in the basement. There is, however, a locked door that no one can open. Matt begins to suffer from visions and nightmares involving dead bodies with carved words in their skin and a young boy. Matt is able to open the door and finds that the house was once a funeral home.
While undergoing treatment at the hospital, Matt meets a man named Reverend Nicholas Popescu (Koteas) who he confides in regarding the visions and ghostly feelings he’s been having. Nicholas takes him seriously and advises him to find out what the spirit wants. Matt becomes quite tortured by the visions and he is found shirtless and covered in blood by his family.
One day while the children are playing hide-and-seek they find a metal box full of photographs and a container with human eyelids. The photograph depict a séance with a boy leading the group. Ectoplasm is shown floating from his mouth. Researching it further the kids find that séances were held at the funeral home. At one séance, all those attending were found dead and the boy, Jonah, disappeared.
Matt and his cousin Wendy contact Nicholas and he comes to their house. Nick has a theory that the old owner, Aickman practiced necromancy and used the bodies of people from the funeral home to strengthen the séance session that Jonah conducted. Matt, Wendy and Nick join hands to pray and Matt enters a vision of the past. It is the last séance in which all the other participants are burnt to cinders aside from Jonah who tries to run away.
Sara comes home and asks Nick, who is a stranger to her, to leave. Nick asks her to call on him if she needs him. As time passes things get worse in the house. Peter is drinking again and spends more time away from the home, so Sara must defend the children from the supernatural happenings.
Sara, scared and desperate, calls Nicholas. He manages to find the remains of Jonah in a dumbwaiter and removes them. This temporarily causes some relief and Nick leaves with the remains.
Sara and Peter reunite at the hospital and learn that Matt’s treatments are having no effect. Matt, meanwhile, escapes to the house he realizes Jonah was protecting the house from the angry spirits used for necromancy.
Matt locks everyone out of the house as he tears down the walls and releases corpses that were buried in the walls. He then pours flammable fluid on the bodies and house and lights it on fire.
Sara get to the house and desperately goes inside to protect her son. She and Matt cower together as a fireman pulls them out of the inferno. Matt is dying and the firemen attempt to revive him. In his dying vision he sees Jonah with Nicholas, but then hears his mother’s voice and returns to his body.
The film ends informing the audience that Matt’s cancer disappeared.
Review:
A Haunting in Connecticut is loosely based on a haunting investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren. The differences can be found here.
The movie, for the most part, was focused on the human aspect of the family. The drama of Peter and Sara’s marriage as it fell apart. Matt dealing with his cancer therapy in addition to be the focus of the haunting. It helped build the characters a bit but unfortunately it also slowed down the pace.
The film would seem to remedy the slow pace with quick jump scare cuts of the ghosts and visions. This was overused and eventually lacked the punch they originally had. It quickly de-evolved into ghost haunting cliches and went a bit over the top with bodies buried inside the home’s walls.
The acting was fairly decent and the story was interesting, if not somewhat unbelievable. It is interesting enough for a one time view as it’s not horrible, just mediocre as far as horror goes.