The Haunting in Connecticut
Encyclopedia
The Haunting in Connecticut is a 2009 American psychological horror film produced by Gold Circle Films and directed by Peter Cornwell. It is alleged to have occurred to Karen Parker and her family, though Ray Garton
, author of In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting (1992), has publicly distanced himself from the accuracy of the events he depicted in the book. The film's story follows the fictional Campbells as they move into a house (a former mortuary) to mitigate the strains of travel on their cancer
-stricken son, Matthew. The family soon becomes haunted by violent and traumatic events from supernatural forces occupying the house.
The Haunting in Connecticut was a moderately successful film at the box office, grossing $177,527,732, but received "generally unfavorable reviews" according to Metacritic
. Gold Circle Films has announced the production of two more entries in the franchise, The Haunting in Georgia
and The Haunting in New York but noted that neither film would be a direct sequel to "Haunting in Connecticut" and will instead be self-contained films with unique characters.
) is driving her son Matthew (Kyle Gallner
) home from the hospital where he has been undergoing cancer treatments. The trips are frequent and long, and they have to stop often for Matt to be sick. Sarah and her husband Peter (Martin Donovan
), a recovering alcoholic, discuss trying to find a rental house closer to the hospital.
On another visit to the hospital, while waiting for Matt, Sarah finds a man putting up a "For Rent" sign in front of a large house. He tells Sarah that he will give her the first month for free if she takes the place, which he notes has a bit of history, as it was formerly a funeral home. On the trip home, Matt is in extreme pain, so Sarah drives back to the house and they stay for the night, using mattresses provided by the owner. Matt hears strange noises and sees his reflection become distorted, but writes the events off as a dream. Neither see a dark-cloaked figure in the house.
The following day, Peter arrives with Matt's brother Billy (Ty Wood
) and cousins Wendy (Amanda Crew
) and Mary (Sophi Knight) and they choose rooms. Matt has chosen the basement, as it it cooler and has its own bathroom, but also a mysterious door, later discovered to lead to the old morgue room. After moving into the house, Matt suffers a series of visions involving an older, bearded man and corpses with symbols carved into their skin. He also sees strange creatures and appears to his family to be having blackouts.
At the hospital, Matt has a conversation with another patient, Reverend Nicholas Popescu (Elias Koteas
). Matt confesses that he's been seeing things and Nicholas cautions him to not mention it to the doctors as they wouldn't understand. Nicholas gives Matt his card and tells him to call him if he needs to talk. After another vision, Matt calls Nicholas and tells him about what he's been seeing and Nicholas advises him to find out what the spirit wants from him. Later, Matt is in his room and finds himself face to face with a burned figure. He asks the spirit what it wants from him and the ghost begins to move towards him. When the rest of the family comes home, they find all of the furniture has been stacked in the middle of the front room and Matt is found shirtless with his fingers bloody from scratching at the wall.
Sarah and Peter take him to the doctor who assures them that his strange behavior is not due to the cancer or the treatment he is receiving. The family is beginning to crack under the stress of Matt's illness and increasingly bizarre behavior. Sarah tries to pray for him but breaks down in tears. Peter, who is having business troubles, is also increasingly tempted to fall back into the bottle.
The next day, the children accidentally find a metal box of photographs, which show Jonah, a young man from Matt's visions, at a séance emitting ectoplasm. Wendy gets Matt to talk to her, and he admits that he's seen the boy in the photos every day since they moved into the house. Wendy suggests the house may be haunted and they should check out its history.
She researches at the library and finds out that the funeral home was run by a man named Aickman, who was the sinister bearded man that Matt has seen in his visions. Aickman also conducted psychic research and would host séances with Jonah as the medium. At one séance, all those attending, including Aickman, were found dead and Jonah disappeared. Later, in the 1950s, the state was building a new road that would run through part of the cemetery near the house and when the coffins were exhumed it was discovered that many of the bodies had disappeared and were never buried. Matt and Wendy then contact Nicholas to seek his help.
Nicholas examines the photos and the box and realizes that a smaller box contains eyelids that Aickman cut off of the corpses in the course of his processing the bodies. He theorizes that Aickman was practicing necromancy in an attempt to control the dead and binding them to the house. He realizes that Aickman did this in an attempt to magnify Jonah's medium abilities. He asks Matt and Wendy to take his hands and pray with him for the souls of the missing bodies and for Jonah.
When Matt takes their hands he again is drawn into a vision of that final séance, as he watches Jonah begins to painfully emit the ectoplasm from his mouth as Aickman looks on. The table shakes and the ectoplasm glows bright and seems to turn to fire. He is broken from the vision when Sarah comes home and demands to know who this stranger is that is in her house. Nicholas attempts to explain and warn her about the spirits in the house and their intentions toward Matt because he is near death.
That night, both Wendy and Sarah suffer visions of spirits. Peter arrives at the house, drunk, and is disgusted to see that every light in the house is on. He begins to loudly shout at everyone for having the lights on and costing him even more money. Sarah quickly gathers the family together in one room and locks the door but Peter bashes it open and yells at them while he removes the light bulbs from the room and then goes around removing all the light bulbs in the house and then smashing them in the kitchen sink. Sarah follows him outside and angrily tells him that he was acting childishly and all hes done is frightened his family. She tells him that if he gets drunk again to not bother to come home.
After Peter leaves, the family is again asleep when all of the electronics in the house go haywire. The cacophony terrifies the family and in desperation Sarah contacts Nicholas. Nicholas finds a fragment of a skull in the furnace and removes it and other remains from the house, and the activity stops.
Matt awakens later to find that something has carved Aikmans symbols into his flesh and he begins to scream. He is taken to the hospital where he again encounters Jonah. Meanwhile, Nicholas nearly crashes his car when Jonah appears in his back seat. He and Matt begin to have simultaneous visions, where Jonah is attacked by the house, and burned alive by the furnace. After imparting this final vision to Nicholas, Jonahs spirit disappears as his ashes float out of Nicholas car.
Peter and Sarah meet at the hospital and learn that Matt's cancer treatments have had no effect. He tells them that Matt is going to die and he has no idea what is keeping him alive. They discover Matt has escaped the hospital.
Back at the house, Wendy discovers all the food in the house has suddenly turned rotten or moldy. She takes a shower, while Nicholas leaves a message telling the family to get out of the house immediately – Jonah's spirit was protecting them from the spirits bound to the house, not a threat. Wendy is nearly suffocated by the shower curtain, but escapes, only to see Matt approaching the house with an axe. She panics and runs back in to tell the children to hide as she locks the door, only to have Matt break through with the axe.
Matt breaks through the walls in the front room with axe, revealing the corpses Aickman hid in the walls. Matt forces Wendy and the children out of the house telling her to not let anyone stop the fire. He barricades himself in the house and begins to tear down the other false walls as marked corpses begin to tumble into the room. As he swings the axe the view switches from Matt to Jonah, who seems to be occupying Matt's body. After he finishes knocking down the walls, Matt gets bottles of formaldehyde from the basement and lights the bodies and the room on fire, then crouches in the middle of the room to await the flames as the bound spirits gather around him.
Sarah and Peter arrive with the fire department and frantically try to get in to save Matt. Nicholas also arrives and Sarah asks him why it isn't over. Sarah gets around a firefighter and into the house and grabs Matt and drags him under a table to avoid the falling timbers. The spirits appear again, but then finally disappear, seemingly freed as a firefighter breaks through the wall to pull Matt and Sarah from the house.
Outside, Sarah watches frantically as the emergency crew attempts to resuscitate Matt. As Matt slips away he has a vision of himself standing in the graveyard where he sees Jonah, no longer appearing burnt, standing in the distance. He seems about to follow Jonah when he hears his mothers voice and returns to his body where he coughs and Jonahs spirit leaves him, appearing next to Nicholas before finally disappearing as he can now move on. As Sarah hugs Matt, Nicholas walks away as the family gathers around Matt.
As Sarah narrates how God works in mysterious ways, we are told that Matt's cancer disappeared, and that the house was rebuilt and resold with no further reported incidents of haunting.
in order to live closer to UConn, where Karen's son was being treated for cancer. The family would later claim that it was plagued by some manner of demonic presence. Mortuary equipment was discovered in the basement, and it was later found that the house had been a funeral home. Karen Parker described the demons: "One of the demons was very thin, with high cheekbones, long black hair and pitch black eyes. Another had white hair and eyes, wore a pinstriped tuxedo, and his feet were constantly in motion."
The house was examined by Ed and Lorraine Warren. According to a write-up on the case in 2009 by NBC
, the morticians that worked in the mortuary were allegedly involved in necromancy
and/or necrophilia
with the corpses, and the room where the two youngest children stayed was previously the show room for caskets; down the hall was where bodies were prepared for viewing. Lorraine Warren would later state that, "In the master bedroom, there was a trap door where the coffins were brought up, and during the night, you would hear that chain hoist, as if a coffin were being brought up. But when Ed went to check he found two women down there dancing around in circles and singing; when he walked towards them, they disappeared." In response to the film, Lorraine would later say the actual case was "much, much scarier than any movie could ever be," and that the film was "very, very loosely based" on their investigation of the house. Lorraine Warren has told the Associated Press
that the house was cleared of any presence after an exorcism conducted in 1988. The story was also covered in an episode of the TV series A Haunting
, called "A Haunting in Connecticut".
, Manitoba
and it was released on March 27, 2009 in the UK, USA, and Canada. The film was later released over the course of nine months to other countries, and was shown at the Imagine: Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival the April following domestic release.
reported that the DVD release of The Haunting in Connecticut was #1 in DVD sales for the week ending July 19, 2009. The extended version DVD includes a commentary with Director Peter Cornwell, co-writer Adam Simon, producer Andrew Trapani, and editor Tom Elkins, a second commentary with the director and actors Virginia Madsen and Kyle Gallner, deleted scene
s with optional director commentary, featurettes ("Two Dead Boys: Making of The Haunting in Connecticut", "The Fear is Real: Re-Investigating the Haunting", "Memento Mori: The History of Post Mortem Photography", "Anatomy of a Haunting"), and a digital copy of the film on a second disc.
The DVD material was produced and directed by Daniel Farrands, who also served as a producer on the film. The DVD release of The Haunting in Connecticut was the recipient of the Best Ghost Story award in Home Media Magazine
's 2009 Reaper Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles in October 2009.
rated the film as "rotten", with a 19% positive rating based on 94 reviews. Metacritic found the film had received "Generally unfavourable reviews", scoring 33 out of 100 based on 23 critic reviews. While the film was mainly criticized for its use of horror cliches and "jump" scare tactics, certain aspects of the film were praised by many critics. Particular credit went to the acting: primarily the performances of Gallner and Madsen. Film critic Roger Ebert
said the film "is a technically proficient horror movie and well acted," though he gave the movie only two stars.
are producing the follow-up The Haunting in Georgia
with Tom Elkins as director and David Coggeshall as the screenplay writer. A third in the franchise was announced, The Haunting in New York, with Sean Hood
writing the screenplay.
Ray Garton
Ray Garton is an American author, well known for his work in horror fiction. He has written over sixty books, and in 2006 was presented with the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award.-Novels:...
, author of In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting (1992), has publicly distanced himself from the accuracy of the events he depicted in the book. The film's story follows the fictional Campbells as they move into a house (a former mortuary) to mitigate the strains of travel on their cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
-stricken son, Matthew. The family soon becomes haunted by violent and traumatic events from supernatural forces occupying the house.
The Haunting in Connecticut was a moderately successful film at the box office, grossing $177,527,732, but received "generally unfavorable reviews" according to Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
. Gold Circle Films has announced the production of two more entries in the franchise, The Haunting in Georgia
The Haunting in Georgia
The Haunting in Georgia is an upcoming horror film that serves as a sister film to The Haunting In Connecticut by Gold Circle Films. The script was written by David Coggeshall and Tom Elkins served as director.-Plot:...
and The Haunting in New York but noted that neither film would be a direct sequel to "Haunting in Connecticut" and will instead be self-contained films with unique characters.
Plot
In 1987, Sarah Campbell (Virginia MadsenVirginia Madsen
Virginia Madsen is an American actress and documentary film producer. She came to fame during the 1980s, having appeared in several films aimed at a teenage audience...
) is driving her son Matthew (Kyle Gallner
Kyle Gallner
Kyle Gallner is an American actor. He is possibly best known for his portrayal of Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas in the Teen neo-noir television series Veronica Mars, and for guest-starring in teen sci-fi drama Smallville as superhero Bart Allen, an adaptation of the character of The Flash and...
) home from the hospital where he has been undergoing cancer treatments. The trips are frequent and long, and they have to stop often for Matt to be sick. Sarah and her husband Peter (Martin Donovan
Martin Donovan
Martin Donovan is an American stage and film actor. He has had a long collaboration with the director Hal Hartley, appearing in many of his films, including Trust , Surviving Desire , Simple Men , Flirt , Amateur , and The Book of Life...
), a recovering alcoholic, discuss trying to find a rental house closer to the hospital.
On another visit to the hospital, while waiting for Matt, Sarah finds a man putting up a "For Rent" sign in front of a large house. He tells Sarah that he will give her the first month for free if she takes the place, which he notes has a bit of history, as it was formerly a funeral home. On the trip home, Matt is in extreme pain, so Sarah drives back to the house and they stay for the night, using mattresses provided by the owner. Matt hears strange noises and sees his reflection become distorted, but writes the events off as a dream. Neither see a dark-cloaked figure in the house.
The following day, Peter arrives with Matt's brother Billy (Ty Wood
Ty Wood
Ty Wood is a Canadian teen actor. He has had several roles including his role as Tim Cherry in the biographical television drama Keep Your Head Up Kid: The Don Cherry Story and in the role of Billy Campbell in the horror film, The Haunting in Connecticut.-Career:Wood is from Winnipeg, ManitobaWood...
) and cousins Wendy (Amanda Crew
Amanda Crew
Amanda Crew is a Canadian television and film actress. She is best known for her work on the television series 15/Love and Whistler, and in the feature-length films Final Destination 3, Sex Drive, The Haunting in Connecticut, and Charlie St. Cloud.-Early life:Crew was born in Langley, British...
) and Mary (Sophi Knight) and they choose rooms. Matt has chosen the basement, as it it cooler and has its own bathroom, but also a mysterious door, later discovered to lead to the old morgue room. After moving into the house, Matt suffers a series of visions involving an older, bearded man and corpses with symbols carved into their skin. He also sees strange creatures and appears to his family to be having blackouts.
At the hospital, Matt has a conversation with another patient, Reverend Nicholas Popescu (Elias Koteas
Elias Koteas
Elias Koteas is a Canadian actor of film and television, best known for his roles in The Prophecy, Fallen and the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films.-Early life:...
). Matt confesses that he's been seeing things and Nicholas cautions him to not mention it to the doctors as they wouldn't understand. Nicholas gives Matt his card and tells him to call him if he needs to talk. After another vision, Matt calls Nicholas and tells him about what he's been seeing and Nicholas advises him to find out what the spirit wants from him. Later, Matt is in his room and finds himself face to face with a burned figure. He asks the spirit what it wants from him and the ghost begins to move towards him. When the rest of the family comes home, they find all of the furniture has been stacked in the middle of the front room and Matt is found shirtless with his fingers bloody from scratching at the wall.
Sarah and Peter take him to the doctor who assures them that his strange behavior is not due to the cancer or the treatment he is receiving. The family is beginning to crack under the stress of Matt's illness and increasingly bizarre behavior. Sarah tries to pray for him but breaks down in tears. Peter, who is having business troubles, is also increasingly tempted to fall back into the bottle.
The next day, the children accidentally find a metal box of photographs, which show Jonah, a young man from Matt's visions, at a séance emitting ectoplasm. Wendy gets Matt to talk to her, and he admits that he's seen the boy in the photos every day since they moved into the house. Wendy suggests the house may be haunted and they should check out its history.
She researches at the library and finds out that the funeral home was run by a man named Aickman, who was the sinister bearded man that Matt has seen in his visions. Aickman also conducted psychic research and would host séances with Jonah as the medium. At one séance, all those attending, including Aickman, were found dead and Jonah disappeared. Later, in the 1950s, the state was building a new road that would run through part of the cemetery near the house and when the coffins were exhumed it was discovered that many of the bodies had disappeared and were never buried. Matt and Wendy then contact Nicholas to seek his help.
Nicholas examines the photos and the box and realizes that a smaller box contains eyelids that Aickman cut off of the corpses in the course of his processing the bodies. He theorizes that Aickman was practicing necromancy in an attempt to control the dead and binding them to the house. He realizes that Aickman did this in an attempt to magnify Jonah's medium abilities. He asks Matt and Wendy to take his hands and pray with him for the souls of the missing bodies and for Jonah.
When Matt takes their hands he again is drawn into a vision of that final séance, as he watches Jonah begins to painfully emit the ectoplasm from his mouth as Aickman looks on. The table shakes and the ectoplasm glows bright and seems to turn to fire. He is broken from the vision when Sarah comes home and demands to know who this stranger is that is in her house. Nicholas attempts to explain and warn her about the spirits in the house and their intentions toward Matt because he is near death.
That night, both Wendy and Sarah suffer visions of spirits. Peter arrives at the house, drunk, and is disgusted to see that every light in the house is on. He begins to loudly shout at everyone for having the lights on and costing him even more money. Sarah quickly gathers the family together in one room and locks the door but Peter bashes it open and yells at them while he removes the light bulbs from the room and then goes around removing all the light bulbs in the house and then smashing them in the kitchen sink. Sarah follows him outside and angrily tells him that he was acting childishly and all hes done is frightened his family. She tells him that if he gets drunk again to not bother to come home.
After Peter leaves, the family is again asleep when all of the electronics in the house go haywire. The cacophony terrifies the family and in desperation Sarah contacts Nicholas. Nicholas finds a fragment of a skull in the furnace and removes it and other remains from the house, and the activity stops.
Matt awakens later to find that something has carved Aikmans symbols into his flesh and he begins to scream. He is taken to the hospital where he again encounters Jonah. Meanwhile, Nicholas nearly crashes his car when Jonah appears in his back seat. He and Matt begin to have simultaneous visions, where Jonah is attacked by the house, and burned alive by the furnace. After imparting this final vision to Nicholas, Jonahs spirit disappears as his ashes float out of Nicholas car.
Peter and Sarah meet at the hospital and learn that Matt's cancer treatments have had no effect. He tells them that Matt is going to die and he has no idea what is keeping him alive. They discover Matt has escaped the hospital.
Back at the house, Wendy discovers all the food in the house has suddenly turned rotten or moldy. She takes a shower, while Nicholas leaves a message telling the family to get out of the house immediately – Jonah's spirit was protecting them from the spirits bound to the house, not a threat. Wendy is nearly suffocated by the shower curtain, but escapes, only to see Matt approaching the house with an axe. She panics and runs back in to tell the children to hide as she locks the door, only to have Matt break through with the axe.
Matt breaks through the walls in the front room with axe, revealing the corpses Aickman hid in the walls. Matt forces Wendy and the children out of the house telling her to not let anyone stop the fire. He barricades himself in the house and begins to tear down the other false walls as marked corpses begin to tumble into the room. As he swings the axe the view switches from Matt to Jonah, who seems to be occupying Matt's body. After he finishes knocking down the walls, Matt gets bottles of formaldehyde from the basement and lights the bodies and the room on fire, then crouches in the middle of the room to await the flames as the bound spirits gather around him.
Sarah and Peter arrive with the fire department and frantically try to get in to save Matt. Nicholas also arrives and Sarah asks him why it isn't over. Sarah gets around a firefighter and into the house and grabs Matt and drags him under a table to avoid the falling timbers. The spirits appear again, but then finally disappear, seemingly freed as a firefighter breaks through the wall to pull Matt and Sarah from the house.
Outside, Sarah watches frantically as the emergency crew attempts to resuscitate Matt. As Matt slips away he has a vision of himself standing in the graveyard where he sees Jonah, no longer appearing burnt, standing in the distance. He seems about to follow Jonah when he hears his mothers voice and returns to his body where he coughs and Jonahs spirit leaves him, appearing next to Nicholas before finally disappearing as he can now move on. As Sarah hugs Matt, Nicholas walks away as the family gathers around Matt.
As Sarah narrates how God works in mysterious ways, we are told that Matt's cancer disappeared, and that the house was rebuilt and resold with no further reported incidents of haunting.
Cast
- Virginia MadsenVirginia MadsenVirginia Madsen is an American actress and documentary film producer. She came to fame during the 1980s, having appeared in several films aimed at a teenage audience...
as Sarah Campbell - Kyle GallnerKyle GallnerKyle Gallner is an American actor. He is possibly best known for his portrayal of Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas in the Teen neo-noir television series Veronica Mars, and for guest-starring in teen sci-fi drama Smallville as superhero Bart Allen, an adaptation of the character of The Flash and...
as Matthew Campbell - Elias KoteasElias KoteasElias Koteas is a Canadian actor of film and television, best known for his roles in The Prophecy, Fallen and the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films.-Early life:...
as Rev. Popescu - Amanda CrewAmanda CrewAmanda Crew is a Canadian television and film actress. She is best known for her work on the television series 15/Love and Whistler, and in the feature-length films Final Destination 3, Sex Drive, The Haunting in Connecticut, and Charlie St. Cloud.-Early life:Crew was born in Langley, British...
as Wendy - Martin DonovanMartin DonovanMartin Donovan is an American stage and film actor. He has had a long collaboration with the director Hal Hartley, appearing in many of his films, including Trust , Surviving Desire , Simple Men , Flirt , Amateur , and The Book of Life...
as Peter Campbell - Sophi Knight as Mary
- Ty WoodTy WoodTy Wood is a Canadian teen actor. He has had several roles including his role as Tim Cherry in the biographical television drama Keep Your Head Up Kid: The Don Cherry Story and in the role of Billy Campbell in the horror film, The Haunting in Connecticut.-Career:Wood is from Winnipeg, ManitobaWood...
as Billy Campbell - Erik BergErik J. BergErik J. Berg is a Canadian actor whose most notable performance was the role of Jonah in The Haunting in Connecticut. Erik originally got the role of troubled Jonah at age 15 or 16. His other film appearances have been in the movies "The Saddest Music in the World", "The Big White", and the...
as Jonah - Joe McNight
True story claims
Promotional material for the film claimed that it is based on the "true story" of paranormal activities experienced by the family of Karen and Ed Parker in the 1980s. The Parkers moved into a house in Southington, ConnecticutSouthington, Connecticut
Southington is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It is part of Connecticut's 1st congressional district. It is situated about 20 miles southwest of Hartford, about 80 miles northeast of New York City, 105 miles southwest of Boston and 77 miles west of Providence...
in order to live closer to UConn, where Karen's son was being treated for cancer. The family would later claim that it was plagued by some manner of demonic presence. Mortuary equipment was discovered in the basement, and it was later found that the house had been a funeral home. Karen Parker described the demons: "One of the demons was very thin, with high cheekbones, long black hair and pitch black eyes. Another had white hair and eyes, wore a pinstriped tuxedo, and his feet were constantly in motion."
The house was examined by Ed and Lorraine Warren. According to a write-up on the case in 2009 by NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, the morticians that worked in the mortuary were allegedly involved in necromancy
Necromancy
Necromancy is a claimed form of magic that involves communication with the deceased, either by summoning their spirit in the form of an apparition or raising them bodily, for the purpose of divination, imparting the ability to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge...
and/or necrophilia
Necrophilia
Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia or necrolagnia, is the sexual attraction to corpses,It is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The word is artificially derived from the ancient Greek words: νεκρός and φιλία...
with the corpses, and the room where the two youngest children stayed was previously the show room for caskets; down the hall was where bodies were prepared for viewing. Lorraine Warren would later state that, "In the master bedroom, there was a trap door where the coffins were brought up, and during the night, you would hear that chain hoist, as if a coffin were being brought up. But when Ed went to check he found two women down there dancing around in circles and singing; when he walked towards them, they disappeared." In response to the film, Lorraine would later say the actual case was "much, much scarier than any movie could ever be," and that the film was "very, very loosely based" on their investigation of the house. Lorraine Warren has told the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
that the house was cleared of any presence after an exorcism conducted in 1988. The story was also covered in an episode of the TV series A Haunting
A Haunting
A Haunting is an American paranormal docudrama anthology television series that originally aired from October 28, 2005 to November 9, 2007 on the Discovery Channel. The program features narrations, interviews, and dramatic re-enactments based on various accounts of paranormal experiences at...
, called "A Haunting in Connecticut".
Production
Filming began on September 10, 2007 in Teulon, and WinnipegWinnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
, Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
and it was released on March 27, 2009 in the UK, USA, and Canada. The film was later released over the course of nine months to other countries, and was shown at the Imagine: Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival the April following domestic release.
Home release
RentrakRentrak
The Rentrak Corporation, is an audience measurement company based in Portland, Oregon, United States. As of June 2009, Bill Livek is the company's chief executive officer.-History:...
reported that the DVD release of The Haunting in Connecticut was #1 in DVD sales for the week ending July 19, 2009. The extended version DVD includes a commentary with Director Peter Cornwell, co-writer Adam Simon, producer Andrew Trapani, and editor Tom Elkins, a second commentary with the director and actors Virginia Madsen and Kyle Gallner, deleted scene
Deleted scene
In Entertainment, especially the film and television industry, Deleted scenes are parts of a film removed or censored from or replaced by another scene in the final "cut", or version, of a film...
s with optional director commentary, featurettes ("Two Dead Boys: Making of The Haunting in Connecticut", "The Fear is Real: Re-Investigating the Haunting", "Memento Mori: The History of Post Mortem Photography", "Anatomy of a Haunting"), and a digital copy of the film on a second disc.
The DVD material was produced and directed by Daniel Farrands, who also served as a producer on the film. The DVD release of The Haunting in Connecticut was the recipient of the Best Ghost Story award in Home Media Magazine
Home Media Magazine
Home Media Magazine is a weekly trade publication that covers various aspects of the home entertainment industry, most notably DVD, Blu-ray Disc and digital distribution. Also covered is news relating to consumer electronics, video games, home video distributors, video-on-demand and Internet...
's 2009 Reaper Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles in October 2009.
Critical reception
Review aggregator Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
rated the film as "rotten", with a 19% positive rating based on 94 reviews. Metacritic found the film had received "Generally unfavourable reviews", scoring 33 out of 100 based on 23 critic reviews. While the film was mainly criticized for its use of horror cliches and "jump" scare tactics, certain aspects of the film were praised by many critics. Particular credit went to the acting: primarily the performances of Gallner and Madsen. Film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
said the film "is a technically proficient horror movie and well acted," though he gave the movie only two stars.
Box office
In North America, the film opened in second place (behind Monsters vs Aliens), averaging $8,420 at 2,732 theatres. Its final North American gross was $155,389,516, and it made a further $22,138,216 internationally for a worldwide total of $177,527,732.Sequels
Gold Circle FilmsGold Circle Films
Gold Circle Films is an American independent film production company, mainly focusing on horror and romance films, founded in 2000. Titles released by Gold Circle include White Noise, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Wedding Date, and The Man From Elysian Fields.-Films:*Double Whammy *The Man From...
are producing the follow-up The Haunting in Georgia
The Haunting in Georgia
The Haunting in Georgia is an upcoming horror film that serves as a sister film to The Haunting In Connecticut by Gold Circle Films. The script was written by David Coggeshall and Tom Elkins served as director.-Plot:...
with Tom Elkins as director and David Coggeshall as the screenplay writer. A third in the franchise was announced, The Haunting in New York, with Sean Hood
Sean Hood
Sean Hood is an American screenwriter best known for horror films, and more recently, action/thrillers.-Early life:Hood graduated from Brown University, with a double major in pure mathematics and studio art, and then spent several years working in Hollywood as a set dresser, prop assistant and...
writing the screenplay.