Review

The Campbells move into a rental in Connecticut so Matt Campbell can be closer to the hospital where he is undergoing treatment for cancer and to save his mother Sara from making the long and arduous drive home each evening. This has stretched the family budget to the limit but heck the rent is cheap for a large Victorian pile that can accommodate Matt, Mom, his two sisters, and much younger brother. Only thing missing was the family dog. Matt's father decides to stay at the family home in order to continue his contracting business.

Almost immediately after moving in to the rental strange things start to happen, which seem to be emulating from a almost surgical room in the basement. Seems Sara neglected to mention to the family that the house used to be a mortuary, guess that sort of thing slips your mind. As things escalate Matt's teenage sister Wendy does some research and discovers the house was used for séances and was once home to a powerful teenage medium, I assume this was the Mortician's son? A Reverend, that Matt meet at the hospital is called in and worryingly identifies an evil presence in the house. Can Matt, Wendy, and Sara overcome the spooks or will the house go full Amityville on them, apparently a movie based on true events ensues.

Wouldn't you know it another movie based on the involvement of those curmudgeons Ed and Lorraine Warren. Gosh the gruesome twosome get around, pity they can't actually deliver anything approach scientific proof for their outlandish claims that has been verified by anyone remotely believable. Unfortunately for the self styled Demonologists Ray Garton, who wrote the novel the movie is based on, isn't prepared to do a Jay Anson and has actually stated for the record the events in the house were by and largely created by him as the original family couldn't get their stories straight and kept contradicting each other. Hearsay has it that Ed Warren told Garton to make it up but to ensure it was scary, which isn't something you would expect from a seeker of the truth really. So the whole "based on true events" that is being used to push the movie is pretty much marketing hype, are people still being convinced by these bogus marketing claims?

Anyways onto the movie itself which does surprisingly have the odd effective moment but generally announces it with enough fanfare to do justice to a royal birth in the Women's Weekly office. The atmosphere is certainly thick enough to cut with a knife, once again dilapidated large old house with lots of dark places, though it has to be said the whole feeling is slightly melodramatic and not altogether as free flowing as one might want. There's a bunch of logic issues with the movie, apparently only dying people can see ghosts, unless the script requires a fright scene and that idea is jettisoned. There's certainly a few gruesome ideas running through the movie, grave robbing, mutilation of the corpses, necromancy, but Ed Gein would be pretty bored by what's going down, what no human skin lampshades!

Yet another horror flick from the Boredwood system that doesn't do anything remotely new or interesting

The vast majority of the movie however reverts to the sudden jump scare tactic that works for one scene but then becomes pretty predictable through the rest of the flick. You know the camera turns around and someone or something is suddenly there, focus is on the background while something moves rapidly in the foreground, and the old standard something appearing in mirrors and other reflective surfaces. This tactic might work for a tween chick who has never seen a horror flick before but it becomes painfully irritating to those of us on the veterans dance card.

I guess creature feature wise it's not too bad on the fright night meter. We get revenants with milky eyes and text tattooed into their flesh, a burnt ghost thing, and that's about all she wrote. Writers Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe try to trick us into believing there's a demonic entity haunting the house, but about the only people believing that will be tween chicks and Lorraine Warren. It should be noted the expert on the supernatural, yes that trope is wheeled out and dusted off, is pretty hopeless and directly leads to three characters being put into harm's way.

So just to sum up here, spooky atmosphere, lame CGI effects and more jump scenes than you can poke a year of Boredwood cookie cutters at, hmm let me at this movie one more time. Unfortunately I wasn't grooving to the haunted house aspects, so pretty much a non-starter for ten for me though others might rock to the beat.

Surprisingly for a movie of this type the acting is pretty good, yeah shocked the hell out of me. Virginia Madsen (Sara Campbell) is on as the mother having to go through her worse nightmare, Madsen was kicking a major with the role. Kyle Gallner (Matt Campbell) made me believe his character had cancer, you could readily believe Matt had just thrown his cookies and was doing his best to cope with being in a weakened state. And Amanda Crew (Wendy) was solid as the older girl the Campbell's had taken in for some unexplained reason.

Not surprisingly there's no T&A going down, this one was aimed at the teens and hence nothing was going to interfere with the teen orientated rating. Amanda Crew threatens to show her boobs at one stage, shower scene, but sorry you are going to be sadly disappointed. Did I mention there's nothing in the way of gore? This movie is pretty prim and proper folks.

I wasn't overly concerned about catching up with The Haunting In Connecticut but ended up snaffling a copy during a JB sale. The trailers at least made the movie look interesting and I've got a soft spot for haunted house yarns. Unfortunately what I got to view was pretty bulk standard stuff without anything much in the way of chills or spills, there's nothing substantially different going down in this movie than what you have seen 101 times before. Worth a look for haunted house fans, but not much in the way of a recommendation to anyone else, another Boredwood cookie cutter than doesn't even reach for anything surprising.