The Haunting in Connecticut

Oh boy! A movie about a haunted house, this is usually a fool proof method to get my attention. With claims of it being “Based on a True Story” we all know what that means. I watched a special that aired on the Discovery Channel a few years ago that gave a dramatized account of the alleged haunting with interviews and those god damn Warren’s again claiming they can feel the presence of demonic spirits. Apparently they only sense these things when a book and movie deal are in the works, Amityville for example. So when I began watching The Haunting in Connecticut I thought I had a leg up on the other viewers, but quickly the story jumped the shark and dove right into the land of necromancy and lost all credibility I would have given it.

We meet Sara and her ill son Matt while they make the long commute from the oncology lab where Matt has been receiving treatments for his cancer. Deciding that the eight hour trip is too much for her son who is receiving radiation and other treatments in his experimental cancer group, Sara begins to look for a house to rent in the interim until that nasty old cancer is cured. Sara makes a late night spur of the moment decision on a house that was close to the hospital and affordable but has a history. The balance of the family moves into the house with Matt and Sara and choose their rooms. Matt chooses the basement for practical reasons, it cool and has a bathroom so he can get all bulimic.

Shortly after everyone is settled in, Matt begins to see dark shadows and visions of a young boy. Worried he is having hallucinations from the treatment he keeps mum about the whole thing. But since this movie is attempting to scare us, the activity progresses. One night the locked doors in the basement room where Matt stays open revealing embalming equipment. Cat’s out of the bag now, they are all living in a funeral home, dun dun dun! At this point, the movie should have continued the path of telling a story of a haunted house, but instead it decides to wing it and tell a story of past necromancy, séances, ectoplasm that displays itself as the scum from the bottom of the Charles River and the defiling of hundreds of corpses from the local cemetery.

Matt goes crazy and his condition worsens and so does the movie. Gotta say that I was very disappointed with this. Why can’t we go back to stories of haunted houses without needed to explain them, their haunted for Christ sake, they don’t need extra flair. Like An American Haunting a well known ghost story has been twisted into something ridiculous and unrecognizable. I long for another Exorcist or The Shinning Hollywood just hasn’t caught on yet, but one day they might.