Wherein Even Ectoplasm Is Kinda Dumb

Slimer’s ectoplasm is way cooler. While highly flammable, the
psychic goo in The Haunting in Connecticut just looks silky and
way too easy to clean up, not like Slimer’s viscous green mucus. In a
total yawner of a horror flick, it’s sad that crappy ectoplasm is the
Haunting‘s one sorry excuse for a hook.

Unless you count the fact that the film is based on a “true” story
of a family that was haunted by ghosts in their rental
home. Boooooring. Overall, Haunting is grim—populated
with characters like Cancer Boy (Kyle Gallner), the family’s teenage
son who is undergoing treatment for his terminal illness, his Drippy
Mom (Virginia Madsen), and his Recovering Alcoholic Father (Martin
Donovan). To be closer to the hospital, the family rents a dodgy house,
which was formerly a mortuary that was run by a séance-holding
necromancer and a psychic Igor who could spew ectoplasm like a true
champ. Way back in the sepia-toned olden days, this undertaker and his
teenage medium would carve up the bodies of the dead, and cut
spooky-ooky words into their bodies… all in the basement of the
Connecticut rental house.

Decades later, this dead psychic boy just won’t let it go though.
He’s like “Wah wah wah, the dead aren’t at peace, boo hoo hoo.” So he
starts haunting Cancer Boy—who, thanks to his experimental cancer
treatment, is prone to hallucinations, like seeing Slimer harangue
librarians (no, not really). But the entire family is a bit dubious of
these ghostly visions, of course until the ghosts start putting the
smackdown on all of them, too, and then they believe him for sure!

If all this seems mundane, you’d be dead
right (ha?). With a cancer-ridden priest (Elias Koteas) there to guide
the spirits on their way, the look-alike comparisons to The
Exorcist are inevitable, but Haunting is more like that
film’s unsophisticated backwoods cousin who likes goofy and cheap
thrills, while simultaneously boring you to tears with 90-plus minutes
of talk about their ailments. In other words, it’s as much fun as
watching a nagging corpse harass a cancer victim.