Who knew that Connecticut was a den of ghostly activity? Well, maybe not as this film monkeys with the “true story” angle to add some very Hollywood haunting. It was an entertaining film, but just don’t think that all the events really happened to the family.
Matt Campbell (Kyle Gallner) has been diagnosed with cancer and is in an experimental treatment plan. His family lives four hours away from the hospital where the treatment is administered and his mother Sara (Virginia Madsen) drives him on the arduous journey back and forth for the treatments.
His father Peter (Martin Dovovan) is a recovering alcoholic and the family budget is stretched making the regular bill and hospital bills meet up. Sara sees how Matt suffers during these long car rides and wonders if they should rent a place closer to the hospital. Peter is reluctant due to their money situation, but relents to Sara. She starts scouting rentals in Connecticut.
She comes across one large place, it seems perfect but it has a history since it used to be a funeral home. She tries to put it out of her head and keep looking but the trip home finds Matt sicker than usual so she turns the car around and rents the place.
Soon the extended family, sans Peter, has moved into the large house and strange things begin happening. Matt chooses the basement for his bedroom, but that was where the mortuary equipment and workroom still exists.
He starts seeing visions of a burnt ghost named Jonah (Erik J. Berg) and consults fellow cancer patient Rev. Nicholas Popescu (Elias Koteas) about the odd happenings in the house. As Matt gets closer to entering the next world, the spirits within the house become even more restless.
The Haunting in Connecticut wears its “based on a true story” badge with all the prided that master movie promoters like William Castle could muster. However, the truth is so much different than the fiction. The truth is that a family called the Snedekers rented a house that used to be a funeral home in the 1980s and experienced visions of demons.
Believe them or not, but the film used their story as a jumping off point and decided to go for broke when it came to the ghouls and ghosts. The whole back story of a psychic named Jonah has been manufactured for the screen.
The events detailed in the finale never really occurred as we’d have seen it all over the news (not that similar stories of graveyard scams and careless or evil morticians aren’t in the news right now) and the original house wasn’t burned down and rebuilt as the epilogue details.
The film does hit the highlights when it comes to haunted house flicks and does offer some creepy bits and jump scares.
The focus to me seemed to be taken off the family dynamic (true story) and the strain of the cancer diagnosis and put it on the scares (hence the back story). It’s a card call on the film since I thought the back story had some interesting aspects, but trying to pass it off as “true” felt a bit much to me.
The version presented in this two-disc set is unrated (the theatrical version was PG-13 – the new neutered horror standard) but I’d imagine that it was more gore than anything as I didn’t see the theatrical version.
The Haunting in Connecticut is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include two commentaries. The first is from director Peter Cornwell, producer Andrew Trapani, co-writer Adam Simon, and editor Tom Elkins. The second is from Cornwell, Virginia Madsen, and Kyle Gallner.
Other features include the 14 minute “Two Dead Boys: The Making of The Haunting in Connecticut,” the 41 minute “The Fear is Real” about the true story, the 12 minute “Anatomy of a Haunting” about hauntings in general, the 11 minute “Memento Mori” about the cultural aspects of photographing the dead to have a memory of them, 8 minutes of deleted scenes with an optional directory’s commentary, the 2 minute theatrical trailer, and previews of other Lionsgate titles.
Disc two is a digital copy for your PC or portable device.
The Haunting in Connecticut does offer some scares and an interesting back story, but the “based on a true story” is long on “based” and short on “true.”
A family did move into a former funeral home and experienced things (so they say) but they definitely didn’t find any real skeletons in the closet and a history of a mad mortician and his psychic assistant.
The Haunting in Connecticut is now available at Amazon . It is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for a July 20th release. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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