Haunting in Connecticut, the

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
4/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
4.5/10

Year made: 2009
Runtime: 92 minutes
IMDB page: here

The story made some sense... mostly. The acting was.... close enough. I suppose you can't ask for too much in a horror movie. Especially an American one.

Premise: Matt is a teenager with cancer. To be closer to the hospital where he's receiving chemoradiation treatment, his not-so-wealthy family (parents, a younger sister and brother, a live-in babysitting cousin) moves to this wonderful but cheap house in Connecticut. Slight catch: the house has a history. As a funeral home.

Matt has one foot in Death's door already, so he can see some of the remnants of the house's dark past. The house's old owner tried his hands in necromancy and seances, with the unwilling help of a young assistant/medium.

Acting: Matt's actor Kyle Gallner caught my eye. That's about it. Virginia Madsen's loving mother is only so-so and not so believable. But Gallner's sincere desperation and loss of control to both his physical disease and the dark powers embedded in the house is quite something to watch. His quiet, pale, sweat-drenched face in pain is about the only thing remarkable about the film.
The film relies on mostly loud noises and sudden seemingly "scary" images to scare audiences, and these days you just have to do better than that. The bodies covered in bloody carved writing are a nice touch, the ectoplasm (described on wiki as "weightless defecation floating out of a medium's mouth") takes on an interesting shape. But eh, I've seen better.

Overall, blerg.

And I shall be more diligent and write more about the interesting movies I have seen in the past few days.