Haunting In Connecticut, The

Based on a chilling true story, The Haunting In Connecticut charts the Campbell family's move to upstate Connecticut, where they experience a terrifying, real-life encounter with the dark forces of the supernatural. Upon setting up house, they soon learn that their charming Victorian home has a disturbing history: not only was the house formerly a funeral parlor where inconceivable acts occurred, but the owner's clairvoyant son Jonah served as a demonic messenger, providing a gateway for spiritual entities to cross over. Now, unspeakable terror awaits when Jonah, the boy who communicated with the dead, returns to unleash a new kind of horror on the innocent and unsuspecting family. (Gary Reber)

Both the theatrical version (102:29) and the unrated version (102:50) are on the disc. Special features include audio commentaries with the director, producer, and cast and crew; four featurettes: Two Dead Boys: The Making Of the Haunting In Connecticut (SD 14:36), The Fear Is Real: Reinvestigating The Haunting Parts 1 and 2 (HD 41:46), Anatomy Of A Haunting (HD 12:17), and Memento Mori: The History Of Postmortem Photography (HD 10:59); six deleted scenes with commentary by Director Peter Cornwell (SD 08:32); the theatrical trailer; up-front previews; BD-Live interactivity; and a digital copy of the film.

The 1080p MPEG-2 picture exhibits an overall soft character, but at times the imagery is sharp and defined and reveals fine facial features and textures. The picture is stylized for effect, but otherwise, is natural in appearance, which heightens the realism. Fleshtone naturalness varies, depending on the scene. Blacks are deep and solid, but shadow delineation can be less defined. In some scenes, the imagery is stylistically desaturated. The imagery is often terrifying, and as such, the picture is impressive. Overall, while the imagery exhibits inconsistencies, often for effect, this is a captivating picture experience that effectively works for the storytelling. (Gary Reber)

The DTS-HD Master Audio™ 7.1-channel soundtrack exhibits excellent fidelity and an impressive dynamic range, with finely resolved low-level atmospheric sound effects. The music score is nicely recorded and reveals detailed instrumental timbre. At times the sonic energy is intense, with powerful bass extension in the LFE .1 channel, to below 25 Hz. Sound effects are often directionalized, and the soundfield often is holosonically® enveloping. Dialogue is generally well recorded, though, at times production sound and ADR sound are bloated and forward. In some scenes, though, the dialogue is nicely integrated spatially. The added two channels in the mix dramatically enhance the enveloping experience. This Lionsgate 7.1-channel soundtrack sounds as though the added channels are not correctly positioned to the sides, but to the back of the sweet spot. This is quite possibly not the fault of the mix, but the processor making it necessary to switch outputs to correctly position the surround signals, with respect to our 7.1-channel loudspeaker positioning. Unfortunately, the creative community, the studios, and the equipment manufacturers, have not dictated a spatial loudspeaker setup standard, nor has the DTS® seven-position loudspeaker remapping software been implemented in receivers and processors. This is supposed to allow the end user to tell the processor how his or her 7.1-channel loudspeaker system is positioned in the room. Our preferred 7.1-channel setup is a perfect circle, with each full-range loudspeaker location equidistant from the sweet spot and equidistant from each other along the perimeter of the 360-degree circle, forming six equally defined 60-degree segments relative to the sweet spot. In this arrangement, the added mid-left and mid-right surrounds at 90 degrees convey enhanced surround envelopment, dimensionality, and directionality. This is not the case here, without switching outputs. Still, this is a haunting soundtrack, with at times, impressive soundfield envelopment and directionalized sounds. (Gary Reber)