• Wide Release
• Director: Peter Cornwell
• Written by: Adam Simon, Tim Metcalfe
• Running Time: 92 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: PG-13 - Parents Strongly Cautioned
• Cast: Virginia Madsen, Kyle Gallner, Elias Koteas, Amanda Crew, Martin Donovan, Ty Wood, Sophi Knight, D.W. Brown, Erik J. Berg, John Bluethner, John B. Lowe, Adriana O'Neil, Will Woytowich, James Durham, Darren Ross, Sarah Constible, Nicholas Podbrey, Blake Taylor, Keith James, Kelly Wolfman, Jessica Burleson, Matt Kippen, Jeny Cassady

A few years ago, for Christmas, my mom gave a book called “In A Dark Place: The Story of A True Haunting”, and because I have a voracious appetite for anything paranormal, I immediately dove into it. As memory serves me, I loved the early part of the book but, gradually, hit a wall at about 100 pages in. Generally books dedicated to a single, specific ‘haunting’ case usually, for the early part, at least, tend to focus a prominent eye on the human characters, while the actual ghosts or paranormal events take a back seat, only to make the occasional, rare appearance - that is until the second or third act where it overwhelms them and ultimately becomes the thrust of the story, as the humans are forced to either cope or do battle with forces unknown. "In A Dark Place” was the opposite; it was a book literally, from the outset, overflowing with ghosts and spooky incidents, and, after awhile, it became like a litany of experiences without context – wrapped in and around a central odious character, the son. I had to put the book down for a while because I had lost sight of what I was reading, lost sight of the humans (the Snedeker family) in the story - in their place, I had ghosts, ghosts and more ghosts, coming out my ying yang -- and this was a true story, supposedly. Eventually I would persevere, picking up the book again, I pushed through to the somewhat ambiguous conclusion.

Afterwards, I would discover that the book’s author, Ray Garton, was somewhat uncomfortable with his own sources, the Snedeker family, and cited publically that while putting together the various puzzle pieces of accounts and interviews, the family “couldn’t get their story straight.” As any author with no ethics would do, he chose to not call the family on the inconsistencies and simply wrote the book and dumped it into the marketplace for a profit. So, okay, it was now a matter of figuring out what parts of the book were true and what was probably fabricated; or maybe it was all fabricated. Who knew? Regardless, I’m a firm believer in the unknown – in ghosts and things that go bump in the night, so I wanted to believe. Then I heard that the Snedeker case was going to be made into a feature length film, and I hoped, oh, how I hoped, that they would get to the true heart of the matter. An earlier episode of the Discovery Channel’s “A Haunting” based on the case wetted my lips, but, oh man, Hollywood was getting in on the gig, so I was hoping that they would treat the case with at least the tiny bit of respect it deserved. When I read that Peter Cornwell, the director, was not using Garton's book as a source, and that he hadn't even bothered to read it, I was absolutely psyched!

"The Haunting In Connecticut”, with its “based on THE true story” tagline, has received the usual smug, condescending reviews from the typically smug and condescending critics, most of which like to start off their reviews but pointing out, in a standard self-righteous tone, how even believing in ghosts and in haunted houses is something only a buffoon would do; like they’ve somehow personally proven as a hoax the thousands of ghost and haunted house stories that are related every year, going back hundreds of years; that they’ve somehow proven every photo and video on the topic to be a fraud; that they’ve somehow become the authority on anything even related to the subject. Some smug, overpaid, too lazy to get (or work) a real job fucking hack film critic, has somehow appointed himself the be all and end all on a topic they’ve more likely than not, only broached in, you guessed it, a movie theatre. Fuck I hate film critics! What that off my chest, I’m on to the review…

What did I think of “The Haunting In Connecticut”? Um, well, I’m not sure. It commences the same way most ghost stories do, in that a family unwittingly agrees to buy a house, only to discover later, that it’s haunted. The story is being related to us by a clearly frazzled but orderly Sara Campbell ("The Haunting" star Virginia Madsen), the mother, who sits in front of a television camera, proclaiming to nobody in particular, "I don't care if you believe me." From there, we pull backwards into the past, more specifically, 1986, as exhausted mom Sara chauffeurs her cancer-stricken 14 year-old son, Matt ("Wet Hot American Summer" star Kyle Gallner), eight hours back and forth from her country home in Upstate New York to a treatment facility in Connecticut. Her husband, Peter (Martin Donovan, who played a ghost in "Wind Chill"), too, bares the brunt of the strain of travel and having a child dying of cancer, as the sole breadwinner, he spends very little time with his wife and more time appraising that whiskey he long ago gave up in an effort to save their marriage.

As Matt signs on for an innovative new experimental treatment, Sara and Peter decide that it’s time to move the family closer to the facility. An old, creepy-looking Victorian house in upstate Connecticut eventually catches Sara’s eye, but she doesn’t commit, not right away. Later that night, however, on the drive home from a particular bad day of chemotherapy, her son’s pained convulsions in the backseat ultimately guide her back to the home, and she, thanks to an affable salesman, becomes a buyer. The ghosts come almost right away, as Matt lays on a mattress thrown on the floor, watching an old black and white television. As he readies for sleep, he flips off the tv and, in the shadow of the doorway, a figure can be seen moving briskly into another room. Matt doesn’t see it. We do! And hence begins our journey into the haunting aspect of the “The Haunting In Connecticut”.

It’s a house "with a history," as the real estate agent puts it in his sales pitch to Sara. Wow! He isn’t kidding! In fact it used to be a funeral home, one where corpses were desecrated and séances were carried out on a regular basis. Be it chance or some higher power, Matt chooses the basement to be his bedroom, which just happens to be the place where the mortuary was located. Heck, some of the paraphernalia is still there, collecting dust. And while the children (Sophi Knight, Ty Wood) and his niece Wendy ("Final Destination 3" star Amanda Crew) get that hair-raising vibe pretty early on, Matt is almost instantaneously thrust into what amounts to lollapalooza of nightmarish auditory and visual carnage, something that he, at first, chalks up to hallucinatory side-effects from the treatment, but elects not to say anything for fear he’ll be removed from said treatment – something that could, ultimately, save his life.

The haunting begins with the sporadic slammed door, the odd, ominous creaking floorboard, and the occasional fleeting glimpse of a grotesque, calligraphy-carved wraith, which tends to pop up around every corner, usually accompanied by a shrieking violin. Eventually it graduates to full sepia toned recreations of the past, as Matt watches in stoic disbelief as the back-story of a young kid about his age, Jonah, a medium, who is forced by his tyrannical mortician father to conduct ghastly séances, unravels. Oh yeah, Jonah’s pop, aside from being an eyelid fetishist, apparently is convinced that mummified corpses make for good insulation.

The big problem I had with the film is that the rapidly edited visual assaults eventually take their toll on the viewer, to the point where they actually lose their power. I was practically laughing midway into the film when Jonah begins projectile vomiting ectoplasmic gunk, and by the end, when the ghosts emerge into the frame, from every angle, I was quite literally bored. The repeated appearances of Jonah, looking more like a s’more than a ghost, goes from alarming to tedious.  Even more ridiculous is the kids insistence on playing hide and seek over and over, even though, by the time we reach the second round of the game, each has had a ghostly encounter. Huh? Also, there’s the whole notion that the family might huddle up in bed together in a state of terror, not once, not twice, but three times, rather than actually breaking for the car and driving the fuck away. Again, huh? Lastly there’s Reverend Popescu ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" star Elias Koteas, underplaying his character to the point of pure awesomeness) who suggests that being near death offers one the ability to see the “other side.” Again, double huh? Cornwell, buddy, you've lost me! Granted, the scene where Popescu speaks of his wife as she lay seconds from death, looking around the room at “the others”, this was actually pretty spooky.  But like everything else, the director eventually drags this concept through the mud, going so over the top by film’s end, we’re practically stepping on M. Night Shyamalan's creatively bankrupt toes.

While I've established that I’m not a fan of film critics, I do have to concur with them for the most part about this film. “The Haunting In Connecticut” was a disappointing affair, in several respects. In comparison to the book, and even the Discovery Channel special, this is nowhere near a real representation of the facts of the case. Hilariously, some like to point to the more innocuous moments in the film, namely the moment a drunken Peter arrives in the middle of the night, flies into a rage and proceeds to remove all the lights in the house - as one of the more preposterous aspects of the film, while skipping over more obvious ones. Incidentally, the lights incident did actually happen! Many other aspects of the story, however, come right from the lazy, cliché-overloaded minds of the film’s creators, and nobody seems interested in calling them on it.

I can't honestly recommend this film. For the story, I'd suggest the book is at least entertaining, even if the author is a putz. Better yet, look for the Discovery Channel's "A Haunting in Connecticut" episode. At least they attempt to get it right.