"Just another boring attempt at horror."

The Haunting in Connecticut is a textbook example of how movies that feature scary music, scary images, and a scary premise aren't necessarily scary, contributing to the latest trend of "horror" movies that act more like after-school specials or Lifetime movies of the week than romps into the horror genre.

Based on a "true" story, Haunting tells the story of a family who rents the creepiest house in Connecticut only to find out later that the house used to be a funeral home (big surprise) where all sorts of weird and ritualistic stuff happened some 100 years earlier. The teenage boy living in the house also has cancer and is on a treatment plan that may or may not cause hallucinations. He begins to see ghosts and glimpses into the funeral home's past, and he attempts to uncover the horror of what happened in the house years ago.

Much like The Haunting of Molly Hartley, The Haunting in Connecticut presents a potential logical explanation for the supernatural occurrences from the very beginning: Is it a hallucination, or is it for real? The problem with that setup is, if there's an alternate and reasonable explanation for what's going on, like the kid's seeing things because he's on medication, then it becomes difficult to believe that the ghosts and other supernatural occurrences are really happening, taking any chance of actual scares with it.

The film uses a lot of creepy and disturbing imagery, like old photographs of people posing with their dead relatives, and presents a backstory that is both unsettling and horrific. You would think that seeing a kid with ectoplasm floating out of his mouth or the neighborhood mortician clipping off the eyelids of the deceased and carving scriptures of some kind into their skin before wrapping them like mummies would be powerful and scary. Yet somehow, it comes off as rather boring, almost like a children's picture book filled with scary images, but without the words to bring meaning to it.

Haunting also tries to tell a story of a struggling family dealing with the stress and financial burden of cancer treatments. A few scenes here and there focus on the difficult time the parents are having with the possibility of losing their son, and all of a sudden the flick goes from a haunted house movie to a movie about dealing with family members with cancer. The dad's a recovering alcoholic, so the movie focuses on that for a while, and the whole time you're thinking "why is this relevant and why do I care?" and you can't answer because honestly ... you don't know. I think it was an attempt to make the characters relatable, but it's done so haphazardly that it's hard to see how their family struggle has anything to do with the haunted occurrences or the overall story in general.

Was there any part of this movie worth watching? Yeah, about 15 minutes of it was actually enjoyable: the uncovering of the mystery of the house. About an hour into this borefest, things began to pick up when they discover what horrible thing happened in the house. The revelation of the mystery, the hunt to find the truth, and the flashback as to what happened ... it actually sucked me in a bit. Then it went back to its boring and not-so-scary ways, leading up to the end that was sort of interesting, but not all that surprising.

The Haunting in Connecticut was a lame attempt at telling a "true" haunted house story. Unlike other movies based on true supernatural events, like The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Amityville Horror, Haunting wasn't scary or believable because a logical explanation for what happened was presented early on. Scary music, scary imagery, and a scary premise don't make a movie scary. Those factors can contribute to the scariness, but you have to believe that what's happening is really happening for it to be effective. Beyond the film's lack of scares (even the boo scares were weak), it lacked direction and likable characters to make you care one way or another. In the end, The Haunting in Connecticut was just another boring attempt at horror without the meat to back it up.

Grade: D

Ammon Gilbert covers the latest in horror weekly for Film.com.

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