Review by CJ

Director:
Peter Cornwell

Starring:
Kyle Gallner, Virginia Madsen, Martin Donovan, Ty Wood, Sophi Knight, Amanda Crew

Other notable appearances:
Elias Koteas

Running time:
92 minutes

Watch this if you liked:
The Amityville Horror, The Conjuring, The Conjuring 2, Poltergeist

The Campbell family move to a house in Connecticut to be closer to the hospital at which eldest son Matt (Gallner) is undergoing cancer treatment. The family soon learn that their new home was previously a funeral home and that they are not the only current tenants.

The Haunting in Connecticut is your run of the mill haunted house film. It doesn’t have the suspense of its predecessor The Amityville Horror or the outright fear conjured (not even sorry) by The Conjuring films that came after it, but it has jump scares in the right places. For seasoned horror movie fans, this will make a lot (if not all) of the scares predictable.

Kyle Gallner delivers a convincing performance as the primary target of supernatural attention in The Haunting in Connecticut. Virginia Madsen is often heart wrenching as the family matriarch. The rest of the cast do a good job but they’re all pretty stock standard horror movie performances.

Overall, The Haunting in Connecticut manages to be a good, but not great, addition to the haunted house branch of the horror genre. It has an interesting plot that is based on a true story, a few jump scares in the right places and likeable characters. Well worth a look if you enjoy haunted house or supernatural horror movies.

Rating:

“One bright day in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other. A deaf policeman heard the noise and came and killed those two dead boys.”