The Haunting in Connecticut (2009) - Virginia Madsen as strong mama leads eerie haunting horror

♥♥♥♥

+ Best Haunting Movie of the Year

One of the inexplicable, horrific events of the film has made its way onto this poster for Peter Cornwell's The Haunting in Connecticut

A hard-pressed working class family with four children, including one who has cancer and undergoes expensive treatment, relocate to a house in Connecticut, where an experimental mortuary formerly resided...

The Haunting in Connecticut is a classic haunting story, SPOILER which uses at least its first half with characters wondering, if they really saw this or that or are losing their minds. The filmmakers make at least one too many references to Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece The Shining (1980), and the use of CGI does go a bit out of control towards the end.
But this is still a seriously unsettling story, which is well-orchestrated and furnished with credible acting. Virginia Madsen (Candyman (1992)) stands at the center in an inspiring, strong part as the family's indomitable wife and mother.
The Haunting in Connecticut is written by Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe (Bones (2001), both) and directed by feature-debuting Peter Cornwell (Mercy (2014)).

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Young star Kyle Gallner gives an interview about his work in the movie here

Cost: 10 mil. $
Box office: 77.5 mil. $
= Huge hit
[The Haunting in Connecticut was released 27 March and runs 92 minutes. The film is based on an actual 1986 Connecticut case, which was investigated by Ed & Lorraine Warren (known from The Conjuring films), but the truthfulness of the haunting is disputed. Filming took place in Manitoba, Canada, from September - December 2007. The film opened #2, behind fellow new release Monsters vs. Aliens, to a 23 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for another week (#3) and grossed 55.3 mil. $ (71.4 % of the total gross). The film's 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 6.1 mil. $ (7.9 %) and Mexico with 2.7 mil. $ (3.5 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to two notches harder than this one. The success resulted in a sequel: The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013) and a proposed second sequel set on Long Island, which is still in development. The Haunting in Connecticut is rotten at 16 % with a 4.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Haunting in Connecticut?