We saw The Haunting in Connecticut at the movie theater for date night (after refusing pizza from “Carlos Zambrano” at the mall pizza shop – seriously, the guy looks just like the famously hot-headed Chicago Cubs pitcher!) and the movie made for a pretty good ghost story.  I had heard it was based upon a true story, but after seeing it, here is my guess on what about the movie is true:  a teenage boy has cancer, his family rents a house (a former mortuary) near the hospital where he is receiving treatments, and they had strange happenings while staying there; probably due to stress or lack of sleep or even just plain exaggerations but not hauntings, is my guess.  This is the basic plot of the movie, but I left out many events that could not have possibly happened in real life and would also be considered spoilers, so I will not go into details.  I will say that the movie opens with all kinds of vintage photographs of deceased people – I know this because of my friend who attended a lecture on the subject.  I had wanted to go with her, but we found out about it last minute and I relunctantly had to pass.  But my friend went and came back with all kinds of interesting info which is how I knew what the pictures were that opened the movie.  For instance, many people back then (the movie takes place in the 80’s, but the pictures were from the early 1900’s) didn’t have their photograph taken often, so when a loved one passed away, they would get their family portrait taken with the deceased – better late than never, I guess?  Not only that, sometimes they would pose as if the person was still alive – kind of morbid by our standards today, but then again, things are very different and taking pictures is so much more common; it’s difficult to imagine past attitudes about this.

But The Haunting in Connecticut is a very entertaining, edge-of-your seat nailbiter with plenty of startles.  To its credit, it’s scary and creepy without the gore.  Worth checking out, if you like that sort of thing, but not one of my favorites – it did give me some ideas for a haunted house though…  Now if I can just remember them until 2010 when we actually have the time to DO the haunted house…

Wow.  What a good movie.  The Orphanage is an eerily spooky ghost story, and I don’t really know what else to say about it because I want to make sure not to spoil anything.  They must have felt the same way when they wrote the summary on the back of the dvd’s box because it was very general and even incorrect in some aspects.  The movie is in Spanish, and I’ll admit that scared us away from watching it for awhile.  We got to go out to see a movie together while we were in Florida last January, and we went to buy tickets for The Orphanage, but the worker told us it had subtitles.  So we saw One Missed Call instead, and that wasn’t nearly as good, not even the same kind of movie.  Our movie rental place has a satisfaction guarrantee, so when we told them how unhappy we were with The Fun Park, we got a free rental.  My husband was trying to be quick again – that’s what got us into trouble with The Fun Park in the first place though – so he just grabbed The Orphanage, remembering that we had wanted to see it after reading the glowing reviews from critics.  Pretty soon, it was Sunday already and we hadn’t watched the movie and it was due by 11 pm that evening, so we quickly watched it while the kids were all napping from our big weekend.  It didn’t take long to forget we were reading subtitles rather than watching people talk in the movie; it was that good.  The critics were actually right for once.  Like I said, I really don’t want to give any of the plot because it’d be difficult to explain anything without giving away spoilers.  So I’ll just say, if you like spooky movies, this one is a must-see.  It’s not even really a horror movie; it’s supernaturally suspenseful.  The story draws you in and doesn’t let go…  you may not speak the same language as the characters, but you idenify with them, feel their pain, and genuinely care about what happens to them as the story unfolds.  SEE IT!  It’s a totally different movie experience between the subtitles and just the kind of movie it is – I HIGHLY recommend it!