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Claiming that any genre film is "based on a true story" will automatically raise eyebrows for some due to Hollywood's tendency to take dramatic license with accuracy.  Claiming that specifically a horror film is based on a true story is a bit trickier as it will automatically divide audiences into two camps: those who will see it because they're curious about paranormal happenings in the real world and those who will immediately write it off because they don't believe in anything paranormal.  If the film succeeds, then audiences will be a bit more intentional about checking under their beds and keeping the lights on the night they saw it because, in their minds, it could happen to them.  If the film fails, then audiences laugh it off, quickly forget about it and give no more thought to things that go bump in the night.  For example, in 1979, The Amityville Horror made suburbanites terrified of their own homes.  Recently, An American Haunting, The Mothman Prophecies and the Amityville remake have failed to resonate after the credits roll and the screen goes black.  The Haunting in Connecticut, the latest venture into the realm of PG-13 horror, is supposedly based on a true story from Southington, CT in 1987 and tries to differentiate itself from the rest of the crowd with a focus on family-centered love and emotion.  Though a competent debut from director Peter Cornwell, The Haunting in Connecticut won't really impress anyone with its formulaic scare formula and fumbled emphasis on sentimentality.

Matt Campbell (Kyle Gallner) has cancer.  Struggling emotionally and financially with his deteriorating condition, his mother Sara (Virginia Madsen) makes the executive decision to temporarily relocate their family to a home in Connecticut closer to the hospital at which Matt can receive experimental treatments.  The house, though cheap and conveniently located, has a history as a former funeral home.  Though this doesn't initially bother anyone at first, it's not long until Matt begins to see strange visions around the house, including scenes of a seance and the defiling of corpses that seem to have occurred decades ago.  Though Matt begins to mentally unhinge, he hesitates to let anyone know what he sees out of fear that his visions will be interpreted as side effects of the cancer treatments.  It's not until he meets Reverend Popescu (Elias Koteas), another cancer patient, in the hospital one day that he finally finds an outlet for his fears and an answer to his questions.  As Popescu claims, ailing patients like he and Matt who straddle the worlds of both the living and the dead are more open to messages from those on the other side.  As his health begins to decline and the bonds holding his family together continue to strain, Matt fights to uncover the mystery of the house's past and why spirits have continued to linger there.

Before this script was brought to her, Virgina Madsen had apparently been looking to do a horror movie for the previous three years.  She chose The Haunting of Connecticut because of the emotional family element at the center of it.  Just as how the Lutz family found themselves being torn apart in 1979, the Campbell's experience, or are supposed to experience, the same thing.  The problem with how the writers and director go about expressing this in The Haunting though, is that outside of the mental and physical struggled occurring within Matt, there's not much strain to be found.  The only scene that really attempts to demonstrate the affect on other members of the family, is one very brief and very flat scene in which Peter Campbell (Martin Donovan) comes home drunk one evening and, mumbling about the electric bill, breaks all the light bulbs in the house (they'd all been sleeping with the lights on).  But it's a lousy payoff to barely touched upon exposition and it carries no emotional weight.  Peter, in fact, could've been written out of the story completely and it would've made no difference.  Actually, it may have helped increase the emotional tension by setting up Sara as a single mother.  Granted, that's not how things happened during the real hauntings, but complaining that this film isn't accurate enough to the source material is about as useful as complaining about the hospitality in prison.  Still, some heart and soul is found within Matt whose vulnerability and ensuing strength radiates thanks to the strong performance of Gallner.  Never does he resort to being a mopey teenager nor either does he come off as a bland, submissive mama's boy.  Instead, he's perfectly believable as a kid struggling to find some light in his life, fluctuating between weary smiles, defeated tears and dark humor.

Aside from Gallner, there isn't much to emotionally root us in the story.  We don't really feel much of a connection between Matt and Sara and a lot of the dialogue is stilted and deliberate in efforts to try and make up for it.  Without these scenes working effectively, there isn't much to help build tension up through the end since the scares, which are frequent and vastly predictable, are pretty much just uniform events released in rapid fire succession.  A lot of the flack for that rests on the shoulders of writers Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe who settle for standard setups and payoffs to make up for the exclusion (admirable though it may be) of gore and violence.  Despite this, Cornwell does the best with what he's given and manages to throw in a few visual surprises every now and again.  With the aid of cinematographer Adam Swica, Cornwell sneaks in some subtle scares that don't rely on loud bangs from the soundtrack to provide a jump.  While it's true that some moments - a quick glimpse of a figure in a full length mirror, a shadow on the wall bending over a sleeping Matt - won't necessarily cause audience members to run screaming out of the theater, they are the closest the film gets to developing some type of brooding and unsettling atmosphere.  As a first timer, Cornwell holds the film together efficiently enough to warrant giving him another chance with a better script down the line.

All in all, The Haunting of Connecticut won't be remembered five years from now as anything groundbreaking, but it doesn't deserve to be on anyone's year-end list of worst films either.  Though audience members are likely to sleep soundly after seeing the film, Cornwell shows enough encouraging sparks to think that, if handed better material, he could create something worth remembering. 

Email me your thoughts at jr@magnetmediafilms.com

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