The Haunting in Conneticut

Review by Lucia Santiago Dantés.
El Kiosko Magazine
www.elkioskomagazine.com

  Haunted house, corpses behind the walls, eyelashes kept in a box, ghosts, and ectoplasm coming out form a kid’s mouth. You’ll find all of the above and more in the movie The Haunting in Connecticut since in theaters across Canada and U.S since Friday 27, 2009.

 Must say first, I liked this movie because it pays a homage to old school horror movies. It relies on a good story rather than on special effects, although there’s some sound design and sfx enhancing the creepy feeling.

 The story is based on a real life incident that took place in Southington, Connecticut back in 1986. There’s even a documentary on the Discovery Channel recounting the incidents. It’s a better experience to watch the movie first, because even thought the movie has a good art directing and cinematography, I find many re-enactment scenes from the documentary too similar to the movie.

  The film starts with an interview to woman named Sara Campbell (Virginia Madsen) retelling the story (this made me think that in fact, they took a lot of ideas from the Discovery Channel documentary “A Haunting in Connecticut”): Sara Campbell looked and found an affordable house near the hospital his son Matt (Kyle Gallner) is treated for cancer. The boy’s sickness has drawn more than empty all the family savings and loans, so the old house near by the cemetery it’s not what they had in mind but the price is right. Soon after moving in, Matt begins to see ghosts and paranormal phenomena around the house. Matt is afraid and worried to talk about with the doctors about the strange incidents because for the medical point of view that means the treatment is deteriorating the brain cells, and a stop the treatment on him, so he decides to endure all the visions until all the family is either afraid of him or the house.

  The only criticism to the story is why nobody leaves the house? As I said it before, even though ”The haunting…” deals with a lot of paranormal activity, the movie also contemplates the possibility of a psychological explanation when we acknowledge that Matt’s ghosts might be hallucinations caused by the cancer treatment. But the same question remains to me… ok he had a hallucinations because of the medicine, but how about the rest of the family? They all seemed to have this “hallucinations” too. So how could you explain that?

Anyways it is a good horror movie to watch over the weekend.