The Haunting in Connecticut 2009

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The movie bumps along from low-grade scare to scare, and it's not lousy, mainly because Virginia Madsen prevents it from being so. Read more

Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: Gives you the creeps, the giggles and the groans in almost equal measure. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: It loses steam once the wraiths become fully visible: they're just not scary enough. Read more

Ted Fry, Seattle Times: Despite well-designed scare shots, the laborious telling of this elaborate ghost story ultimately fizzles under the weight of too much effort. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: As a piece of storytelling, The Haunting In Connecticut is pretty lazy. As a horror movie, it's lazier still, bringing out every annoying shock-cut and disorienting sound-design trick of the last decade. Read more

Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic: The eerie buildup is mostly pro forma... But the backstory of the haunted house, revealed slowly in sepia-toned hallucinations, really is creepy. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: The Haunting in Connecticut is another movie based on a supposedly true paranormal occurrence -- perhaps you haven't entirely forgotten 2005's The Exorcism of Emily Rose or An American Haunting from 2006. Read more

Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times: Haunting suffers for its need to be sold as a straight-up horror film, and the fact it has been seemingly retrofitted as such. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: It's just such a thoroughly typical ghost story. Read more

Adam Markovitz, Entertainment Weekly: Madsen barely emotes during the ensuing flood of hokey scare tactics. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Eventually the whole thing ends as these B-movies usually do -- with false denouements, sudden conflagrations and forced happy endings that leave the audience groaning and prematurely grabbing for their coats. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: It was with considerable surprise that I found myself flinching more than once while watching Peter Cornwell's ghost story, The Haunting in Connecticut. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Connecticut: not very haunty. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The writers, "true story" or not, were plainly recycling Amityville story structure. So credit editor Tom Elkins with the scares that work. Read more

Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer: Good performances and an eerie atmosphere can't save the flick: I'd wait for the DVD. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: If the movie has a flaw, it's too many surprises. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: It's boring to pick apart a movie's inconsistencies one by one, but The Haunting in Connecticut contains so many insults to the audience's intelligence, it doesn't offer much choice. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The Haunting in Connecticut operates like someone leaning in behind you and yelling. At first, it makes you jump. The 200th time, it's just annoying. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The combination of emotional impact and brutal imagery is initially potent, but the second half of the movie wallows in occult cheese that's hard to swallow. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Ho-hum, one more slapped-together exercise in pre-fab horror. Read more

Greg Quill, Toronto Star: Director Peter Cornwell and writers Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe set up their version of the Connecticut haunting with remarkable efficiency and credible atmospherics. Read more

Hank Sartin, Time Out: Read more

Christopher Orr, The New Republic: [W]hite people haven't learned much in the quarter-century since Eddie Murphy's classic disquisition on The Amityville Horror. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: What started out reasonably scary, if derivative, just drags on and becomes silly. Read more

Joe Leydon, Variety: A based-on-fact ghost story that's long on atmosphere yet short on dramatic tension. Read more

Scott Foundas, Village Voice: About as scary as a shower that suddenly changes temperature when someone flushes the toilet. Read more