After years of repeated inquiry, the film The Haunting in Connecticut finally answers the question, What is actually IN the great state of Connecticut, aside from one of the best (if not the) college basketball teams in the country right now? Being a lifetime Left Coaster, this question has been brewing in my mind for decades (about 5 minutes before I began writing this).

So before I wrote this review, Horrroryearbook generously paid for a chartered flight (Wikipedia) to Connecticut so I could take a look around this mysterious and uncharted parcel of land somewhere in the upper-right hand corner of that US Map we never paid attention to in Social Studies because we knew it wouldn’t really matter if we learned it or not unless we were on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire and they just HAPPENED to ask us that question along with other questions that happened to be relevant to our lives no matter how far-fetched and loaded for the easily emotionally manipulated it might seem.

Did you know that-

-It’s called the “Constitution State” because most of its citizens have actually sat through Seven Pounds and The Love Guru without falling asleep or vomiting. Them Connecticut-ites iz tough hombres, no?

-in 2004 it was voted the least likely state to get caught holding a child pornography ring (according to fatherflanagan.net). It lost this distinction midway through 2006 because all the kiddie porn-trepenuers went there to set up shop like they were giving away free land at the end of Far and Away.

-it’s the birthplace worthwhile and cherished human beings like Meryl Streep, Katherine Hepburn, Mia Farrow and our o-so-beloved 43rd President, George W. Bush. Okay, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad.

-It’s a great place to set a…really lousy horror film, even if it supposedly based on a true story.

Horroryearbook: Not only do you get Classic Horror Titties…but you also learn shit

I’m guessing that when you first saw the ads and trailers for this, you thought it looked horrid, like Mirrors-bad, and if you were going to the movies this weekend, you were going to see Monsters Vs. Aliens instead.

It is, and you are, as I’m sure this Conn-Haunting will barely make the top 10 (it’s barely worth the time to illegally download it) before coming out on DVD in 3 days.

The movie is based on what happened to the Campbell family over the course of a couple of days in the late 80’s. As the remaining Campbell family watches this movie, most of its members will remark to themselves in an empty theater “Our lives as a movie just suck. Let’s go see Watchmen again.”

It’s 1987, and the Campbell family is just your average, everyday group of people living their lives. I’ll introduce some of them because I can only remember some of their names as the other members of the family aren’t that important. We have-

-Sara Campbell (Virginia Madsen)- She’s the mom of this bunch and it’s kind of sad that former Oscar Nominee Madsen (for Sideways) is schlepping in substandard horror movies (as opposed to hi-class trash like The Number 23), but I guess we all have bills to pay. In fact, I counted on more than one hand (4 times) how many times I’d rather be watching Madsen in Candyman rather than having to sit through this movie. It also sucks because Madsen’s like, naked in every other film BUT this and Sideways. As if you needed another reason to skip this movie.

Sara is mom to-

-Matt Campbell (Kyle Gallner)- he’s your average, happy-go-lucky teenager, except he’s dying of cancer (cue solemn music). I guess that pretty much cancels the Happy and Lucky part. He’s losing hair and vomits every 20 minutes, which pretty much makes like every teenager during Prom Night.

Daddy Pete Campbell (Martin Donovan)- His only character trait is that he’s a recovering alcoholic who’s laid off the booze for the sake of his family and marriage. The only reason you’d put a plot point like this in is so that he could possibly relapse into a drunken stupor in when the freaky shit starts occurring. Gee, I hope I haven’t given anything away…

Wendy (played by Sex Drive’s Amanda “I beaved a family of four” Crew)- she’s a cousin who’s moved in and serves as live-in baby sitter in case one of the older kids isn’t available (read: in case Matt eats it).

Uncle Bruce- he’s the wacky comic relief and star of movies like The Ice Rink and The Man with the Screaming Brain as well as guest-starring on TV’s Xena Warrior Princess and Burn Notice. He turns up every scene or so just to deliver a funny line like “Bring Me Some Sugar Baby…” or to hock some Old Spice. His appearances in the movie got the biggest audience reaction, even if they didn’t really occur.

The Campbell family decides to move to Connecticut because that’s where Matt is eligible for some super-special treatment to fight his cancer and it’s much easier than driving back and forth to wherever they’re originally from.

Sara sees a house, and despite its shortcomings (“it has a history…”-rarely a strong selling point) she decides to rent it because it’s cheap and has a wide field so Matt can puke without disturbing the rest of the children, and even the parents don’t like to look at it when they’re eating or else it’ll end up like that scene in Stand by Me. They set up shop while Peter comes up during the weekends after working.

Things are going well…for a while.

Matt begins seeing things: hands around séance-y tables, people with letters carved into their bodies, equipment used for cutting into flesh. This isn’t a good sign because if Matt reports delusions it makes him ineligible for the treatment. So he lies and says everything’s just cherry. You know, aside from dying of Cancer.

But the visions don’t stop. In fact, they get more intense. Whatever the doctors are giving him, it’s either really good shit or really bad. Matt’s already got one foot in the grave (in one scene Matt’s mom asks him what he thinks his casket size might be and then realizes it’s probably not in good taste…so she measures him while he’s sleeping- this really isn’t a scene in the movie but should have been), so he’s closer to the Other Side than most and more likely to see Casper-like spirits, according to a very friendly Reverend (Elias Koteas) also battling cancer.

That these series of events coincides with the ’87 release of that dreadful Dirty Dancing movie is also no small coincidence. As Patrick Swayze is also presently battling cancer and Jennifer Grey disappeared from the mondoverse sometime in the early 90’s (if you try to Google her, you can practically hear the mice running the search engine screech in derisive laugher- “0 of 0 Results found, Try searching for someone with a Career next time”)

And Sara forgot to mention to the rest of the family that the house used to be a mortuary. Seems like that should have been something she should have said over ice cream and punch, but it was cheap rent and they needed a place quick-style.

So while Matt’s freaking out, you the audience are wondering why you spent money watching this in the first place. You’ve seen the trailers, so you know what kinds of visions are giving Matty the non-cancer related chills, and you thought they looked stupid then. Watching the movie only confirms that. The filmmakers know this, and in order to keep you from falling asleep, every 5 minutes they play some music really loud to keep you as mildly interested as you’re going to be. The only ones who’ll actually be afraid are people who’ve never seen a horror movie before.

What works with The Haunting of Molly Connecticut-

1) A refrigerator that looks like mine from college. They do have expiration dates for a reason.

2) Totally 80’s!!!- Yes, it’s set in the 80’s, yet it doesn’t hammer you with obvious 80’s details like radar dish-like earphones or rhythm-deprived white people doing that swim-your-arms-and-snap-dance that Eddie Murphy apes in Raw to that annoying Beach Boys song from Cocktail. You get such arcane items like someone going to a library and actually wading through Microfiche files instead of the Internet. There are tape recorders (kids, ask your parents what those are) the size of small moons. My favorite 80’s detail: Amanda Crew’s Jennifer Beal-in-Flashdance wear.

3) Puke-toplasm- to paraphrase a line from another famous 80’s movie…You will definitely not be having what he’s having.

4) Eyelids, definitely the eyelids.

5) The corpse pile.

6) Jonah the Charbroiled kid (just how you like it, fresh from the grill, not like those other fast food joints that serve it under a heat lamp)- he’d probably get a lot more dates if he’d just be himself around the opposite sex. It would also help if he weren’t burned to a cinder so he looks like a marshmallow at Camp Wauconda. Mmmm….marshmallows.

What doesn’t work- aside from the entire movie

1) You know you’re in for a bad movie when the very first attempted scare is the It’s-just-a-dream one. I guess this movie really is set in the 80’s since that was when something feeble like that actually worked.

2) And the rest of the movie is a series of obviously placed jump-scares and eardrum assaults. You get the feeling the producers knew this movie sucked so they just spiked up the volume on everything, real or imagined.

3) How boring is the first half of the movie? You spend most of it wishing the Cancer would kill Matt already just so you and your fellow audience members could be jarred out of the apathetic stupor they were placed right after the Orphan/Drag me to Hell trailers ended and the movie began. How bad is it when you WANT someone to die of cancer simply to shake things up?

4) Martin Donovan’s tirade about lights is some inferior acting from a usually reliable character actor. Don’t worry, Martin, your career is still safe as not enough people will see this to easily identify you from it. You may now wipe your brow in relief.

5) There are so many Bitch-don’t-Go-in-There!!! Moments that after you’re onto your toes with the count you really don’t care if they go in the dark hallway or the empty closet or the unstable dumbwaiter and you can’t wait for the entire Campbell family to die for being so stupid. Except for Uncle Bruce.

Overall. Skip it…like you were going to already. But please don’t let this movie keep you from taking that vacation to Connecticut like you were planning to next summer, and make sure you get full disclosure before you rent. Just ask the Campbells because (sing along because you know the words, even if you don’t fucking want to know the words)…

They’ve…had…the time of their…Lives
And it don’t matter that Matt is gonna Croak…
Yes they swear…it’s the truth…
And they owe it all to YOU (and some pissed-off phantasms)