‘Haunting in Connecticut’ Cops Out
Good haunted house flick wipes out with a happy ending
written by Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe
directed by Peter Cornwell
No need to mince words: There hasn’t been a great haunted house movie made this decade. Thanks to Hollywood shenanigans, efforts like The Amityville Horror remake have come across as bloated and dumb. A Haunting in Connecticut comes close to righting these wrongs with its suitable, atmospheric location, respectable characters, restrained use of CGI, and a story that riffs off from creepy period medium scenarios, but sadly, this movie cops out with an unlikely happy ending that brings it down alongside other failed efforts.
The principals are endearing enough: Set in 1987, Sarah Campbell (Virginia Madsen, Candyman) is an iron maiden of a mother determined to fight for her cancer-ridden son, Matt (Kyle Gallner). Stretched well beyond their means, Sarah and her husband, Peter (Martin Donovan), along with their three other children, hastily move into an old house in Connecticut near the hospital where Matt is being treated. In time, they discover the house was used as a funeral home, yet they’re unfazed. They never suspect that the long-dead funeral home operators were running necromancy rituals on the bodies, cutting off their eyelids and carving obscure runes on their flesh. All this starts to affect Matt, who begins to act like a malevolent creep.
Despite an inauspicious start, Haunting begins to get things right, running all the bases. The use of mock turn-of-the-century funeral photos and seance photos is inspired; a good launching pad for a scary flick. The story picks up steam as you catch shadows of ghosts momentarily reflected on TV screens and mirrors. The old, lived-in look of the house also helps, as it’s disappointing when you see the art department over-do the look of a haunted house. This house looks familiar, borderline spooky with its dark, craggy rooms and creaky floors. The movie finds itself running full speed ahead, on its way to a home run, as Matt re-lives a disturbing seance in which a long-dead boy medium named Jonah (Erik J Berg) pukes a cloud of bloody, flammable ectoplasm. Soon after, the carved, eyelid-less bodies of the hungry dead start running amok the household.
When you start to root for the film, as the filmmakers get into a good groove of creepy imagery, editing, and pacing, the movie wipes out with a cheap, cop-out of a happy ending that lets the movie down. The Haunting becomes yet another case of the typical, Hollywood-produced horror flick too afraid to take risks; with an ending very likely dictated by moronic audience testing. Without spoiling things much, one of the main characters looks to make a rightful sacrifice so as to save the family, but an improbable, unbelievable last minute save makes everything completely all right. This is a movie that could have been good — and likely one of the best flicks of this year — with a tragic ending. The insincere, feel-good ending demoralizes and betrays all the good, creepy filmmaking that comes before it. It’s a let down; it’s that easy.
There are a couple of other minor weaknesses, such as the way in which the movie incongruously opens like a documentary setup of the events, but it never gets back to that setup. Then there’s Reverend Popescu, the padre character played by Elias Koteas, a stereotype of the tired, dying Christian clergyman that’s been carbon-copied to death in fright flicks. However, the main argument remains: The Haunting in Connecticut is a two-thirds of a good horror flick ruined by a happy ending. What could have been a fright flick to be recommended becomes yet another perfectly mediocre movie to be ignored.
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Nice review, Armando. I know you weren’t looking forward to this one, so I’m glad to hear it was at least 2/3 good. Too bad about the ending, but with a PG-13 rating I can’t say I’m surprised. At the same time, it beat the odds by beating as good as you called it with a teen aim. Any way, I’ll check it out on DVD.
I thought it was pretty good, but the beginning was kind of strange with the clapboard in the shot and setting things up like maybe it was going to be a film within a film (real actors experienced strange events while filming the movie perhaps). But once I forgot about that, it was pretty effective. I know you weren’t happy with the ending, and it does seem like a test audience dictated cop out, but as this was based on “actual events,” does anyone know the “real” story? Was there a cancer-stricken boy in real life and did he survive? If he did live, if indeed he even exists, then you can’t call the ending a cop out. So what is the “true story” of this movie?
Okay, a little internet search shows that little in the movie (or book it’s based on) can stand up to even remotely be called factual. No cancer-stricken son apparently, and none of the family members could keep their stories straight while meeting with the author who admits to taking what he could from the family and then making the rest up and making it as scary as he could. So “based on a true story” is about as far from the truth as you can get in this case! So, now I can get behind the audience mandated happy ending. The boy should have died for a more powerful ending to the film. At least they had the balls to destroy the earth at the end of “Knowing”!
CRDFilm, I expected that little in the film was going to stick to the actual events, as studio films rarely–well, never–stick to the factual events. It’s a marketing gimmick to make people go ‘Ohh, look, this actually happened! Wow!’. More like, ‘Based on Hollywood BS!’ hehehe
The documentary feel at the every beginning is also very awkward, because they never go back to that setup. I wonder if they just cut out all the mock documentary stuff out of the movie last minute. That’s the vibe I got from the movie.
The film is said to be “based on actual events,” but I read a story from the author of the book on which the movie is based, and he pretty much said that it’s completely bogus.
Can anyone tell me the words written on the screen after mom was done talking at the end of the movie? Hubby was sick so we had to leave. Thanks, much appreciated.
[...] Lionsgate will release the extended cut of The Haunting in Connecticut on DVD and Blu-ray on July 14th. The cover art can be seen on DVDA. The disc will also include a commentary track with director Peter Cornwell, writer Adam Simon, producer Andrew Trapani and editor Tom Elkins, a second commentary with the Cornwelland actors Virginia Madsen and Kyle Gallner, deleted scenes with optional director commentary, featurettes (Two Dead Boys: Making of The Haunting in Connecticut, The Fear is Real: Re-Investigating the Haunting, Memento Mori: The History of Post Mortem Photography, Anatomy of a Haunting), and a digital copy. Read our review of the film here. [...]
[...] Coggeshall will pen the script for the Haunting sequel. You can read our review of the first film here.(source:thr) function fbs_click() { u=location.href; t=document.title; [...]