Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

So much average

I'll tell you why so serious

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This movie started out with the child of this couple moving to Connecticut in order to be closer to the treatment center for the cancer that their son is going through. It costs the family every cent. I actually know how this is. So I can relate to these characters big time. They did a very good job in portraying the stress that their characters are going through. I thought the movie had a really good concept, about how malevolent spirits can be seen by individuals who are close to their deaths. Now keep in mind this is a true story folks. This families child seen ghosts of the dead, that had once occupied, or are still occupying, that house. I thought it was completely nuts how the whole house was bodies placed into the walls. Just sitting there, preserved by some freak who believed all this black magic mumbo-jumbo. Can you imagine that? Being a family and having hundreds of dead corpses lain into the walls of your home; sleeping among them even, every night without knowing it. HELL WITH THAT I SAY! That made me cringe, because I looked at the walls in the place I'm at for a few seconds after. I was thinking, "what if there's some weird sh*t in these walls like that?" It's just one of those things in movies that makes you think of it for awhile after. The movie did a wonderful job telling the story of this family, and the frightening sh*t they had to go through, supernaturally and medically, in order to make it through. The last fact that's displayed about the child suffering from cancer is so unbelievable. It actually makes you think. Does this stuff really exist. I mean, the corpses part is believable, there's some weird sh*t in this world. Supernatural healing though? That's a coin-toss. I would actually hope so in fact. Actually, I pray there is. Then this truly isn't the only life. I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone who likes true haunting, and supernatural miracles. This movie also makes you think about things a lot afterwords.

I made a deal with myself a long time ago that, whenever I would watch a horror movie of which I know from beforehand that I probably end up hating it, I would try to keep an open mind and avidly search for at least one positive aspect! This can be almost anything, except for gratuitous boobs on display (too easy), but I'm primarily hoping for at least one innovative plot aspect or surprising story twist. My expectations for "The Haunting in Connecticut" were set very low, because this production clearly features a number of clichéd elements that I dislike the most: paranormal entities in an abandoned house, supposedly based on a true story (yeah, right…), probably copious amounts fake scares and predictable "boo!"-moments and an overload of irritating PG-13 approved digital effects. Yes, the film does feature all the above mentioned stuff, but to my surprise it was still relatively easy to find the innovative plot aspect! To my knowledge and unless if I'm overlooking a certain title – which is always possible with more than 3.500 reviewed horror movies - "The Haunting in Connecticut" is the first movie I've seen that makes a connection between terminal illness and being a paranormal medium. The protagonist, teenager Matt Campbell, suffers from a deadly form of metastatic cancer, and the fact that he continuously balances on the edge of life and death apparently makes him more receptive for paranormal activities. It's definitely not a world- shocking new twist to the ghost-movie sub-genre, but at least I found it acceptable. Since Matt can't physically handle the long car trips between their house and the specialized cancer clinic, his devoted mother Sara rents an extra house in Connecticut. The family can hardly finance this, but they stumble upon a large house that is very cheap due to its past as a funeral home with a macabre history. Matt immediately begins to see nightmarish things, like corpses with strange carvings all over and their eyelids cut off. Together with his older sister and a local priest, also a cancer patient, they dig up the house's history and discover that the original mortician – Mr. Aickman – also used the basement to organize séances. His young assistant Jonah was an exceptional medium who even produced ectoplasm, but one of the séances went horribly wrong and killed all participants including Aickman. Jonah's restless soul, as well as those of hundred others, are still inside the house and now manifest themselves through Matt. Poor kid… As if dying from cancer and struggling through sickening special treatments isn't miserable enough already, he also has to face malevolent Connecticut ghosts! I didn't make any efforts to find out elements of the script are truthful and what others are fictionalized (the latter probably counts for 99%), but at least I can honestly state that this was one of the least annoying haunted-houses/paranormal entities movies that I watched since the new Millennium. I admit I'm a sucker for spooky old photographs and atmospheric black/white flashbacks set in the 1920s/1930s period, so "The Haunting in Connecticut" gains a couple of extra points for featuring this, and the special effects were adequate too. The film has a more than decent cast, with the lovely Virginia Madsen ("Candyman") as the concerned mother and Elias Koteas as the helpful priest. There's a sequel already, set in Georgia this time, and another one upcoming set in New York. After that I assume there will be 47 more of these movies, one for each state.

The Haunting in Connecticut, for all its similarities to classic horror films, neither succeeds nor fails. The year 2000 and subsequent years thereon have one in ten greats. Sadly this movie sits square in the middle. There's nothing new. The terminally ill youngster that's exposed to the supernatural entities that infect the families' new house is unpleasant and a big difference from the usual victims. It does comes with some shockers; a scary spirit or two, a good underlying story, an upset, broken family. The mystery room connected to the basement, where barbaric acts took place, is a horror buff's sadistic delight. Once the ticker's calmed down, the brain takes over, and realises we've been there before. The poorly teenager's link to the undead is gratifying, like The Sixth Sense, but not a route it continues on. It sticks to the frights, dwindling further and further away from its strong opening.

THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT, a spook-house show crafted to crash in on the ever-present public appetite for ghost stories, single-handedly manages to cram in each and every haunted house cliché ever filmed and put it into just one movie. The storyline mixes slow-building suspense with dark and dank cellars, restless spirits, spooky seances, plenty of ectoplasm, possession, and everything else besides.Sadly, despite the 'true story' tag, none of this ever rings true. Instead it comes across as a bland and soulless piece of money-making, a film in which the enjoyment factor is sucked dry from the outset. With major characters suffering from cancer and the rest suffering from a 'lack of personality' crisis, there's absolutely nothing to enjoy here and nothing we haven't seen before.The narrative is so laboured and mundane that merely recounting it is a bore, while the whole haunted house genre has been handled much better more recently with the likes of MAMA and THE CONJURING (not great movies, either of them, but a darn sight better than this). A strangely wooden Virginia Madsen gives the dullest performance of her career, and even the reliable Elias Koteas can't improve things. Give it a miss.