The Haunting in Connecticut

The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

Dir: Peter Cornwell

Writ: Adam Simon, Tim Metcalfe

Based on true events.

This is the film where I discovered that it is much more terrifying to watch horror films with my housemates. These are the same housemates who invited me to go on a ghost tour the other day, and with who I have spent evenings watching for UFOs or the 'void' which appeared to one of our number several weeks ago.

So in this context, The Haunting had plenty of cringe-scares, plenty of "why in the hell would you go in there!?", "get out of the god damn dumb waiter!" and "please don't reflect a terrifying ghost in that mirror!" moments.

In a way, it followed the same formula of The Mothman Prophecies... take a 'real life' story and condense it into a movie length narrative by focusing on the experience of a single person undergoing a pre-existing struggle, in this case teenager Matthew (Kyle Gallner), who is suffering from cancer... his mother's theory, posited at the beginning of the film and enforced by later characters, is that he is exposed to this world of the dead because he already exists between that world and the living. Throughout the film I was mindful of the fact that the story of Matthew's struggle with cancer, and the experience of his family, which was thankfully not ignored by the film makers, was horrifying enough, and they did well not to trivialize it into a mere plot device.

It is stylishly scary, and has enough substance in the characters, the plot and the spacing out of the terror to make it a good watch. The boy medium Jonah is memorable and well-dealt with, at the same time tragic, eerie and disturbing. The vision of him spewing a morphing sepia column into the air kept popping into my head during our ghost tour, which speaks highly enough of it. My only criticism is that, while the plot didn't veer off into the ridiculous, some elements were on the verge of being unnecessary, namely details about the previous occupant's occult practices which seem to mostly serve as fodder for 'scary' visuals (which are actually the least terrifying moments, for trying too hard) and the 'climactic' finale, which was perhaps a turn too far from interesting story ville into movie plot land.

The Mothman Prophecies

The Mothman Prohpecies

2002

Dir: Mark Pellington
Screenplay: Richard Hatem

Based on the book by John A. Keel

The book The Mothman Prophecies is not so much a narrative as a sort of manifesto, chronicling John Keel's years of experience as a ufologist and general researcher of the 'paranormal' and positing numerous facets of Keel's overall theory regarding contactees and the like, which ties itself loosely to the events occurring in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, during '66-'67. It's interesting, not least of all as a study of Keel himself.

So I turn on the film and it suddenly becomes a story. It is a story because it is straightaway a tragic love story, which gives the protagonist John Klein (Richard Gere) (see what they did?) a reason for involving himself in the Mothman saga which is more palatable to movie viewers than Keel's search for answers.

Not me, however. I loved Itchy and Scratchy.

My overall verdict is that while this adaptation achieves an appealing atmosphere and ties together the Point Pleasant '66-'67 story into neat narrative form, in doing so it unfortunately loses the wider scope that makes the time so fascinating, namely the ufo sightings, which it completely leaves out, and the experiences of contactees who it seems achieved small fame in their time for incredible abduction and contact stories. The questions raised in Keel's book and the small town community beset by oddities so frequently during a certain period that they become commonplace is far more engaging, and it would've been nice to see that captured in film.

In many ways, Men In Black is a lot more faithful to Keel's writing!