The Haunting in Connecticut (DVD, 2009, Full Screen/ Widescreen Edition)

THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT is a good horror film that misses being great because of odd pacing. It starts out very slowly: a family is coping with their teenage son's cancer. The boy is put on an experimental treatment that, according to the doctor, may cause hallucinations. The boy sees flashes of ghosts in the family's newly-rented house. He does not tell the doctor when the doctor specifically asks about hallucinations. The only other odd thing that happens in this section of the film (which seems to go on too long) is the mother finding a stash of Victorian post-mortem photos (in which the dead person is dressed & propped up, often with other family members, as if he were alive). Mom flips through the photos much too quickly for a viewer who doesn't know the backstory to realize what they are; then she throws them in the garbage (which caused me to cringe; as an antiques dealer, I know those things are worth a lot of money!) The story doesn't really get going until the teen boy confesses his experiences to his teen girl cousin. She promises to help --- and does she ever! In the next scene, she is suddenly revealing the history of the house as a funeral home where seances were held and a boy medium named Jonah contacted the dead, complete with photos and old newspaper articles. OK, she could have gotten this stuff on the internet, at the library, or from talking to neighbors, but we don't see her doing this; she just suddenly explains everything at lightning speed, much like Mom flipped through the photos. If you don't ALREADY know the story, you're going to miss some of it here. After that, the movie settles down to being a traditional haunted house film with everyone in the family experiencing strange phenomena. The ending is a real stunner and almost makes you forget snoozing through the first third. While the cancer/haunted house story is OK, the really interesting and creepy part is what happened to Jonah in the past. If only they had shown more of that, instead of bits and pieces in choppy flashes! I liked this movie, but it would have been better if the horrors in the past and those in the present had been given equal time.