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‘The Haunting in Connecticut’ ** (PG-13; 1:42): Few phrases should invite more skepticism than “Based on a true story.” Yet slapped on the front of a horror movie, it amplifies the frightfulness by suggesting, “This could happen to you.” And “The Haunting in Connecticut” adds a horror that will undoubtedly happen to many of us: cancer. The combination of emotional impact and brutal imagery is initially potent, but the second half of the movie wallows in occult cheese that’s hard to swallow.
The cancer patient is a young man named Matt Campbell (Kyle Gallner). To move him closer to the hospital where he’s getting an experimental treatment, his mother (Virginia Madsen) rents the family a large Victorian home. She doesn’t tell the four kids or her recovering alcoholic husband (Martin Donovan) that the house was once a funeral home; but the children figure it out when they’re playing the inevitable game of hide-and-seek and find the dissection tools–and Matt figures it out when he starts getting punk’d by a poltergeist who wants him to settle a score.
A trip to the library reveals that the funeral home was the site of seances and ritual mutilations, and the diabolical mortician we see in the antique flashbacks may have chosen Matt to reopen the franchise. Fortunately, just as Matt starts going over to the dark side, he meets a cancer-ridden minister (Elias Koteas) who offers the family a discount on an exorcism.
For a while, the strong cast and jack-in-the-box shocks distract us from the holes in the plot; but as the flashbacks and body parts start piling up, “The Haunting in Connecticut” collapses.
My own trip to the library reveals that there’s no solid evidence to substantiate the supernatural events depicted here. By fudging the facts, this supposedly true story goes from truly scary to truly ridiculous.
–Joe Williams
Source:
Review: “The Haunting in Connecticut” is a holy terror | Joe’s Movie Lounge | STLtoday
The cancer patient is a young man named Matt Campbell (Kyle Gallner). To move him closer to the hospital where he’s getting an experimental treatment, his mother (Virginia Madsen) rents the family a large Victorian home. She doesn’t tell the four kids or her recovering alcoholic husband (Martin Donovan) that the house was once a funeral home; but the children figure it out when they’re playing the inevitable game of hide-and-seek and find the dissection tools–and Matt figures it out when he starts getting punk’d by a poltergeist who wants him to settle a score.
A trip to the library reveals that the funeral home was the site of seances and ritual mutilations, and the diabolical mortician we see in the antique flashbacks may have chosen Matt to reopen the franchise. Fortunately, just as Matt starts going over to the dark side, he meets a cancer-ridden minister (Elias Koteas) who offers the family a discount on an exorcism.
For a while, the strong cast and jack-in-the-box shocks distract us from the holes in the plot; but as the flashbacks and body parts start piling up, “The Haunting in Connecticut” collapses.
My own trip to the library reveals that there’s no solid evidence to substantiate the supernatural events depicted here. By fudging the facts, this supposedly true story goes from truly scary to truly ridiculous.
–Joe Williams
Source:
Review: “The Haunting in Connecticut” is a holy terror | Joe’s Movie Lounge | STLtoday
