The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013)

Touches You

Brilliant and touching

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Young family, plus the wife's sister, move into an old country house in Georgia which has a history of helping slaves escape to the north but which is also haunted. This title is nothing more than a dumb cash-in on the original movie as this is set in Georgia, NOT Connecticut. However it is superior to the first movie. Sure, like the first film, we have overkill on the ghosts, which soon lose any scare factor & just become the norm. And there are some gaping plot holes - why wasn't the rest of the underground "station" fully explored previously in the movie when the initial corpses were discovered? And a 25ft fall later looks like an 8ft one. However, this one has a far more interesting story & I think much better characters than part 1. And although it's not particularly frightening it does have a number of scary moments. Overall a pretty simple but satisfying ghost tale, though I take any "based on a true story" claim regards such films with a huge piece of salt.

Based on a true event this flick sadly doesn't deliver. The acting is okay and above mediocre but for a ghostly story it never becomes frightening. I mean, for horror geeks it isn't frightening. For beginners in the genre they will jump here and there but for me there are a few problems.The effects used are sometimes rather simple and are mostly done with colour grading turning colours to sepia and to black and white. It makes it flashy but it doesn't add a thing towards the atmosphere. On the other hand, seeing ghost disappear purely done with fading in editing gives it a cheap look. There are a few good moments on that I must agree but overall it is a mediocre flick clearly not made for the geeks. Ideal to watch with your teens. One scene did remind me of the excellent Masters of Horror episode Imprint, but be honest, Imprint was much better.Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

Groan. Here's another yawner with so many loud bangs and "this is the time to freak out or jump" cues (the soundtrack is quite noisy and never- ending), it doesn't have time to breathe. Slaves were supposedly rescued by a stationmaster considered a hero in Southern history, but the film points out how this wasn't the case. A taxidermist by trade, it was told down through generations he helped provide refuge and escape for slaves, only with help by a ghost named Mr. Gordy (talking to a child, the daughter of lead Abigail Spencer) do we learn the real truth. An ancestor of Mr. Gordy, the stationmaster did some horrible misdeeds with his taxidermy skills. With Chad Michael Murray (of One Tree Hill) as Spencer's husband (he's all complacent and okay with his daughter's talking to Mr. Gordy, for whom she's the only one who sees him) and the sexy-as-hell Katee Sackoff as Spencer's sister (escaping bad relationships with men and sober from the drink) in the cast, all eventually dealing with the ghosts of the slaves of Pine Mountain and the evil spirit of the stationmaster, with frequent visits to a well where a special hidden room reveals some unpleasant examples of taxidermy in secret.Cicely Tyson is made up to almost resemble a corpse, her eyes discolored and for whatever reason she has horse teeth in her mouth. I was clueless as to why she's made up this way. Her character had relatives that vanished and were never seen again; later, the film shows us where they've been "kept" for quite some time. This is one of those unnecessary characters that knows a child knows. It is like that scene in The Shining when Scatman Crothers addresses "the shine" with Danny Lloyd in the kitchen; Tyson seems to know that the little girl has the ability to see what many others can't. It is basically what Sackoff told the child earlier, but Spencer tries to fend off their embracing of this gift.The film commits fully to "ghost fades" and constant appearances of apparitions popping up practically in every damn scene! Sackoff deserves better than to be lying on the floor with thread strings protruding from her mouth, needled to the roof of an abandoned trailer. Surprising to see a talent like Spencer in something abysmal as this "depiction of a true story". She sees her dead mother and has a "gift" where dead people are visible to her (as they are for the kid and Sackoff) all the time, as pills seem to help very little. Chad just kind of goes with the flow, not all that concerned that the women in his life see dead people. It is all nonchalant and meh to him, although he does rise to the occasion when his daughter's life is in jeopardy. There is a Baptist version of an exorcism (obviously there's *got* to be an exorcism, right?) that does little to help stop the ghosts from hanging around. You do get to see the child finally receive help riding her bike as Mr. Gordy gives her a push. Yeah. And what's up with that title? Sheesh. Why tie yourself to an even worse ghost film? The direction is too busy with all the ghostly visits and warnings of the boogeyman to tell a story in a way that feels like editing ADHD style.You get near drowning in a bathtub, puked out maggots and roaches, rotted corpses, sack-head racists performing taxidermy on a taxidermist, slave corpses in a well, slave ghosts leading a way to their current resting place, a ghoul whose hideous face is stitched to a potato sack, and numerous spectres unafraid to hide themselves. This is a lot of effects, both in what you see and hear, but it is all tiresome instead of scary.

The movie is frightening, yes. It is also somewhat original and has good twists. That is okay.Main characters are real mess unfortunately. To say it very simply, every tree minutes or so they change their opinions. One character sees ghosts and believes their warnings, but the other four do not. Surprisingly this changes constantly.In one moment the aunt is the single person who believes in "gift". After some time she seems not to care about the ghost but mother believes the haunting. Then the daughter manages to find some dead because of visions and warns the others but not aunt nor mother seems to believe a word of her. The father believes, believes not, then believes...What a mess. What a horrible mess of the plot! In the end this is not a story, but more or less a freak show of loosely connected scares with hardly anything in between. It is sort of mass murder zombie ghost redneck torture slavery genealogy revenge spiritual porn or something. It is just too confusing to be really good.