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The hucksters behind The Haunting in Connecticut want you to believe their spook story is the bona-fide, honest-to-God truth.
Don't look now: They probably have a mortgage to sell you too.
Fact is, while the bare bones of this supernatural thriller about a possessed house are rooted in actual events (which were, it should be pointed out, far eerier than any of director Peter Cornwell's mechanics), the meat of the movie is Hollywood at its most bogus -- loud but gloomy, flashy but dull, and tailored for hyper-impatient attention spans.
It's not skilled enough to recommend, not awful enough to stick -- aside from the odd groaner, i.e.: "Now we know why the rent was so cheap!"
Like the ghouls that lurk in its corners, it's perma-fixed in horror ghetto purgatory.
Give it this, though: It is a fright-fest perfectly attuned to the housing crisis -- from Flip This House to Flip Out In This House.
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Easy-to-please genre fans eager to shack up with an Amityville knockoff should be amused while more discriminating audiences will probably just shrug the whole thing off.
Virginia Madsen stars as Sara Campbell, a desperate mother whose teenage son Matt (Kyle Gallner) has cancer.
Rather than continue to make the exhausting commute from their home to the clinic where Matt's receiving experimental treatments, Sara convinces her husband Peter (Martin Donovan) that they should rent a nearby house.
Turns out the property they settle in (with Manitoba doubling for Connecticut) is a former mortuary where a deranged necromancer once tampered with dead bodies and conducted truly terrifying seances.
If that wasn't worrisome enough, the basement still harbours evidence of its ghastly past: Old steel basins, tubs and tables upon which the desecrated deceased were prepared for burial.
Soon -- but only after the entire family has moved in, including their younger kids (Ty Wood, Sophi Knight) and niece Wendy (Amanda Crew) -- Matt is suffering nightmarish visions (such as mom wiping the floor with a blood-soaked mop and scarred, charred corpses bursting out of the walls).
Apparently, as someone fighting a terminal disease, he's the closest to "the other side" and therefore the most vulnerable to the ever-circling demons.
Eventually, things get weird for everyone.
Sounds sufficiently creepy, I know, but Cornwell -- making his feature debut after his acclaimed animated short Ward 13 -- doesn't exercise the restraint necessary to make this Haunting genuinely unnerving.
It's telling, for instance, that -- for all the thunderous music cues and shock-cuts -- the most disturbing imagery the movie produces is sepia-tinged still photography of the dead.
For their part, the actors work with what they have, stranded with single-note characters and underwritten subplots (such as Peter's struggle with alcoholism).
Only Elias Koteas' work as a pained preacher manages to resonate, suggesting a quality this production otherwise sorely lacks -- soul.
(This film is rated 14-A)