The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

Review: written Sep 2009

Amityville style haunted house thriller

There sure aren't any plot surprises in this been-there, done-that haunted house thriller. Having said that, the jumps are done effectively enough, and in a dark room with surround sound and a big screen, I found it certainly creepy enough.

Plot-wise.. a family have to move into a house, for their cancer stricken son to be near the hospital where he is being treated. However, it is an ex-funeral home, and their son starts to see things... So far, so Amityville. The cast are given just enough fleshing out to be interesting, and if there is something routine about the story, there is also something satisfying about old fashioned shocks instead of non-stop torture as seems to now be de rigeur in horror movies. There is a fair bit of cheap shocks using flash-cuts accompanied by dramatic chords, but for the most part this has been fairly well crafted with a decent score, served well by the blu-ray format. It just won't win any awards for originality. The `based-on-a-true-story' tag is given some credence by an interesting documentary accompanying the movie, which interviews most of the people portrayed in the movie. Interesting, because it is not one sided, showing enough naysayers to leave you genuinely wondering what was true and what was not.

In short, unoriginal, but old-fashioned can be effective.