The Haunting in Connecticut Blu-ray Review
Reviewed by Chris McEneany, 31st July 2009
A passable horror – nothing more, nothing less. The story isn’t particularly good and the tone, as dark as it likes to get, is rarely disturbing. Whilst the house is large, ominous and labyrinthine, its residents are mostly shallow and un-engaging and the set-pieces, therein, lacklustre and reliant on knee-jerk shocks that occur with monotonous regularity and without any substance or long-lasting effect. Peter Cornwell deserves plaudits for trying to keep the narrative character-based, but his tendency to pilfer from past genre successes soon grows wearisome.
Lionsgate delivers a release that gets some mileage out of its bonus features, and the audio is spot-on for an atmospheric and aggressive experience to wallop you from all corners of the room. But the video transfer is inconsistent and bullied too much by intensive black levels. It becomes frustratingly two-faced – crystal-clear and embellished with a terrific sense of depth at times, and then softer, noisier and murkier at others.
If you enjoyed The Amityville Horror then this should be right up your haunted street. But even if it looks more polished and enjoys better special effects, it is nothing more than a clone … a little rowdier, maybe, but just too derivative to take on a life of its own.
Slick, but disappointing.
