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The movie ‘The Haunting in Connecticut’ draws its inspiration from the popular myth. The Grabowski family which was presumably haunted during their stay in Southington is referred to as the Snedeker family here. The case stems from paranormal activity recorded in Connecticut in the 1970s. Ed and Lorraine Warren, infamous for documenting real life horror stories, claimed to have endorsed this case along with newtown was werewolf called Bill Ramsey, Janet and Jack Smurl’s unexplainable haunting, and all the Amityville atrocities.
This is more in the realm of what appears to be a new age rumor rather than something as convicing as a genuine supernatural reality. The chilling narrative presented in the movie seems too fabricated for me to draw in from, which makes almost all of Connecticut’s paranormal activity captured in the 70s seem skeptical as well. A documentary author Ray Garton witnessed Snedekers struggle to tell coherent versions of their head scratching story. When he decided to report this shocking fact to the investigators, it seems as if he was waving a big red flag in front of a starving bull.
I think the sole purpose of the movie was to glorify an already glorified ghost story. Similar to the Cheryl Warren theory, a show in which a group of mature children travel to an undiscovered land looking to enchroach on other worlds secrets as if it were parallel to ‘The Haunting in Connecticut’.
We have here no stock characters, but Virginia Madsen and Martin Donovan portray a couple in distress, Kyle Gallner plays their dying son, and Elias Koteas takes on the role of a sinister priest. These are now the Campbell’s family, or at least they try to be as real as possible given the context. The movie has a disturbing score and unsettling imagery, coupled with a house that no longer looks like it was occupied since the previous residents… let’s say, passed away.
So all the elements are there, and one of my fellow reviewers shared with me that he “screamed like a girl three times,” though we all know he is quite notorious for that. There are elements that warrant such ‘screaming’: (1) Surprises and (2) Spectres.
Surprises are those instances when a hand, a face, a body, body part or cat [yes! a cat!] suddenly leaps into the frame and as you sit there, frozen in your seat and then mutter blankly, “Aw, it was only a cat”. Or a face, a body part, a vampire bat etc. The Spectres include some ethereal extras that may or may not actually exist.
Matt Campbell is the son of the Campbell family, and they’re trying to cope with the fact that he’s dying of cancer. He has to be driven extensively for his radiation treatments and because of that he is suffering from radiation burns and constant nausea. This is where Madsen steps in and makes an “executive decision” to purchase a house in close proximity to the cancer center. All in all, if I could say one word to describe the movie, it would be Surprises. Every door, window, bedroom, hallway, staircase, basement and attic leads to another Surprises, so that in the house that event causes place typically never ceases to function normally. The Campbells are Surprised without end at all times of the day, so they must be tuckered out at the end of the day’s running and jumping and standing real still.
But I can’t be too critical because, Surprises is what films like this trade in. Koteas does a great job in the role of the priest, and instead of a ghostbuster in a Roman collar, Koteas portrays a fellow radiation patient who never appeared confident that good would win out in the end.
All right. An absurd tale, so many scares they risk becoming numbing, good acting and direction and what else? Oh, what’s with the ectoplasm? Didn’t Houdini strip the mask from that and prove it as a fraud? And the Amazing Randi? And why is it still treated as real in the real story?
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