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Recently released on DVD and Blu-ray, The Haunting in Connecticut is based on the true story of a Haunting in Connecticut.  But you probably guessed as much.  The real story revolved around the Snedecker family who moved into a house that was once a funeral home and quickly discovered it was full of a variety of demons.  The movie version changes the name and ditches the demons in favor pissed off spirits who suffered at the hands of the former funeral home operator.

Each story, both the fictional and the ‘real’ suffer from a plausible explanation being right up from – the main character, a cancer ridden son, is on a regimen of drugs that can lead to hallucinations.  Sure, in both stories the spooky events eventually affect the entire family, but the first step in thinking a house is haunted is having someone tell you as much.

Kills

Via flashbacks we see between one and six or seven deaths, but that’s being generous as we don’t see much and it does all happen in flashback.  So basically, no one dies, but that’s par for the course in most ghost stories.

Ills

We see a decent amount of blood and a bunch of corpses.  Some eyelids get cut off and bodies have characters and numerals carved into them.  There is a goopy wall that seems to be full of dead tissue, a dude with a burned up face, and someone burns to death.  There are a couple of creepy images, mostly one that reminded me of my grandparents basement and the disembodied head of that boy I killed so many years ago.  Moving on.

Lust

One of the actresses is cute, but she stays fully dressed the whole time.

Learning

Ghosts are dickheads and they will seek vengeance against anyone, whether or not they had anything to do with their deaths.

Review

The Haunting in Connecticut is an alright film that is very well made but ultimately one that fails to keep your attention.  Any real scares the film could have packed in where replaced with jump scares and overly loud music cues meant to make you jump rather than shake in terror.  The film doesn’t manage to bring anything new to the table in terms of ghost stories, nor do any of the acting performances really stand out.

Towards the end, a bunch of corpses are discovered within the walls of the home, each which are remarkably well preserved after spending 80 some years in the home.  They show very little decay and the story has little reason to put them there.  In picking and choosing which prior ghost movies to borrow from, they seem to have taken from the wrong ones, leaving you never on the edge of your seat with suspense or wonder.  That being said, the movie is very well made and well shot.  It is a film that is technically very close to perfect in regards to the visual look of the film, cinematography, and other aspects that are unrelated to story or the overly jumpy audio track.

Haunting might be worth a look if you’re a fan of ghost films as there really aren’t all that many released each year, but if you’re looking for a good, quality scare, you should probably look elsewhere.  However, if you’re a fan of the real world ghost adventures, the special features might very well be worth a look.  Included are some making of documentaries, but especially of note is the The Fear is Real: Reinvestigating the Haunting features which talk to the actual family the movie is based on.  Also included is Memento Mori which follows teh history of postmortem photography.  So if you’re into that, give it a rental.

Blu-ray

The Blu-ray is very well put together.  It starts off with a simple, elegant and cool menu design that doesn’t spoil the movie or become annoying or distracting.  The picture quality is astounding almost throughout.  Some of the night shots have some visible graininess to them, but it’s not bad and is a result of just how amazing the transfer is.  Really one of the best visual presentations I’ve seen.  The audio is good and mixed loud to hammer home some jump scares.

Mortality

Barely breathing.