They say you should never judge a book by its cover, and I should perhaps remember that more. I wasn’t looking forward to watching The Haunting in Connecticut, I like horror films but generally not “based on a true haunted house story” horror films. Maybe Virginia Madsen back in a proper horror film could change that?

The true story aspect is the reason I’d never got around to watching this one before. I bought it ages ago and filed it away and thought very little of it since.

And, I might have been a little wrong about it. Putting the disc in the player I was both happy and surprised to see the Twisted Pictures logo at the start, they’ve been responsible for a lot of films I liked. It was a good start and enough to brighten its prospects. A little.

As the story goes, Sara (Virginia Madsen) and Peter (Martin Donovan) have a sick teenage child, Matt (Kyle Gallner), he’s got cancer and they are doing everything they can to help, naturally. They want to move closer to the hospital to lessen the strain on everyone and thanks to Sara being in the right place at the right time they end up finding a property quite quickly.The family move in, they each find their rooms with Matt choosing the basement with the mysterious door. Ominous.

And, funnily enough, not long after this Matt starts to experience weirdness in the form of visions with old men and corpse featuring prominently.

They quickly learn that the house used to be a Funeral Parlour which creeps them out but not enough for them to move out, for some reason. Even though there is dying teenager with visions of literal death in the house.

I mean, it takes a lot to spook me personally but one thing I do know is that I’d be questioning my decisions roundabout then.It’s pretty much a standard house horror story from there, but if it was truly that I wouldn’t have carried on watching it. It’s an interesting, if somewhat unbelievable premise that the rest of the story tells. And, for one of these films the level of gore is quite high, eyelids being removed and the like.

As it turns out, the “true events” that the film is based on, likely isn’t that true. It was part of the “Ed and Lorraine Warren” thing that they did, many of those “events” have since been discredited one way or another.

Which I wasn’t surprised to learn to be honest. At least this film wasn’t done it the same tone / voice as the other films based upon the Warrens activities (Annabelle etc).

Going back to the film itself, Virginia Madsen once again steals a movie from her co-stars. There were quite a few scenes where she stands out. I mean, I credit her with knowing the kind of movie she was in here and she puts in a quite frankly amazing performance all the same. Not once does she miss a beat. I don’t quite know why I was so impressed with her in this one over other roles, probably because I didn’t expect a lot.
Virginia herself quite liked idea of being in the film, in an interview with Deseret News she’d say “I’ve been looking for a good horror script since ‘Candyman,’ and I’ve been reading them for years, and I just could never find one. They were all either a gorefest or a good idea but a stupid ending. None of them were really character-driven,” until Haunting. I like the film very much I get a particular kick out of scaring the hell out of people; I don’t know why. So I want people to go out and see it.”

Is this one to watch? – Well, once is probably enough for me to watch it properly. It’s worth watching as a fan of Virginia to see how well she does with what she’s got.

Haunting in Connecticut also reunites Virginia Madsen and Amanda Crew who previously worked together in the indie film Crazy Kind of Love. Virginia would also go on to work with Kyle Gallner again in the WIGS web series, Jan, but he was grateful they’d met earlier when she took him under her wing on this one, speaking with The Hollywood News he would reflect back on his time with her one this film;

“Haunting in Connecticut was amazing. It was my first lead in a studio film and Virginia Madsen made sure she took me under her wing. Like the second, I mean, I had someone come get me at the airport and bring me to her. From there on out, I was under her wing. She took care of me the whole time. I learned a lot from her.”

And, there is a Haunting in Connecticut 2, which – Isn’t really a follow up to this one, just trading in on the name. No relation to this one though other than that so don’t go thinking you’ve another to watch if you do watch this one.

Availability:

Good, not hard to find at all on DVD, Blu-Ray and on some streaming channels. Though, you might need a VPN depending on where you are in the world and what services you have available to you.

Gallery:

Trailer:

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