THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT 2: GHOSTS OF GEORGIA

CONTAINS SPOILERS AND GEOGRAPHY

First off: despite the title, this has absolutely nothing to do with the original 2009 film The Haunting In Connecticut except that it's supposedly based on a true (albeit unconnected) story. Suggesting this is a sequel to an entirely unrelated film when its own subtitle claims otherwise is a bit like making an impenetrable art film in Tuscany and calling it A Field In England 2.Indeed, it has nothing to do with Connecticut at all, being set entirely in Georgia, and pleasingly for a horror film the absolute minimum distance between the two states is 666 miles (according to Google Earth).

So in The Haunting In Connecticut 2: Ghosts Of Georgia, an entirely different family move into an entirely different house in an entirely different state, whereupon the exact same things start to happen to them. This time the house is on a vast estate in the Deep South which was used as part of the secret route to help slaves escape to the North generations ago. But something else happened there and the restless spirits won't leave the newly arrived Wyrick family alone until their mysteries are solved....

Cue the usual horror tropes we've seen so often: faces at the window, someone/something running past the camera very quickly (why?) with that meaningless "whoomp!" sound effect and a crashing dischord from the orchestra, flickering lights, apparitions behind the door or standing off in the background. Most ludicrous is the female lead blindly refusing to accept the presence of ghosts even though [1] she sees ghosts herself, [2] she's on medication to stop seeing them, and [3] the "gift" of seeing ghosts is a long-standing ability passed down through her family for at least three generations.

Still, even if it isn't seeking to push genre boundaries or doing anything startling original or unexpected, it is a perfectly decent and well crafted Friday night rental with which to grab your girl/boyfriend's arm every time the movie yells "Boo!!!" in your ear, which is quite often. Towards the end it nudges into overkill with a spectral serial-killing taxidermist with a bag on his head in a secret underground lair full of rotting corpses, which slightly undoes the spookiness of the first half. Unremarkable fare, but well enough put together to function as an effective, efficient, middle-of-the-road horror movie.

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