13 Nights of Hallowe'en 2010: Night #13 The Haunting In Connecticut

Ah! It's Hallowe'en! I hope it's red 'n' black, and slimy green for you. As always I have left the best movie for last. The Haunting InConnecticut is another movie based on a true story. Up until the haunting really shifts into high gear the story is fairly close to the original incidents. I was thrilled when I found out they were making this movie, and even more so when I watched the movie and saw what they had done. Let's start with our star Kyle Gallner. You may have seen him in Jennifer's Body and the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. He just makes this movie so much more. I wouldn't sneeze at Virginia Madsen either. She's been in Candyman, The Haunting, and The Prophecy. The rest of the notable actors in the movie's family include Amanda Crew from Final Destination 3 and Martin Donovan from Insomnia (2002) or on TV in Ghost Whisperer or Masters of Horror (2007).

A last mention on cast is the helpful reverend played by Elias Koteas who was also in The Prophecy with Madsen; otherwise you mightrecall him from Lost Souls, The Fourth Kind, Shutter Island or Let Me In (2010), or if you're really sharp in a small role in Apt Pupil. There is something I have to gush about in Haunting In Connecticut and it is one word... ectoplasm! It's right there on the cover. We're not talking green slime here, we're talking something much more textbook, and I for one love it. It's the icing on a very cool cake. Now, for those of you who don't know, this is a movie about a mother who moves her family into a house that was formerly a mortuary because the house is close to the hospital where her one son is undergoing an experimental cancer treatment. The place is haunted, but the how and why is all of the fun. Enjoy, and Happy Hallowe'en!

Mood: festive.

Music: This Is Halloween by Danny Elfman. MP3s

Anatomy of a Horror Setting #4-6: Give Three Knocks

The Victorian era embraced the mystical even as rational thought, science, and industrialisation gripped Britain, the empire upon which, near the end of that time, the sun never set. This was especially apparent in the love affair with mediums and séances. Previous discussions have considered the impact of speaking with the dead on a horror setting, but the methods of communication were not covered. Séances with or without a proper spirit medium present have a unique flavour. There is a particular phenomena that is associated with séances and mediums that doesn’t see a lot of coverage elsewhere. That would be ectoplasm, oft exteriorised by mediums and the foundation upon which a ghost may build limbs or a body with which to exert itself on the physical world.

Among the options for the setting there is an allowance for different expressions of the physicality of ectoplasm. Historically speaking comparisons have been made to gauze, and less interestingly mucus. There is a suggestion that apparitions are indistinguishable from the living in non-contact situations, the realisation arrived at only with the dissipation of the ghost or similar impossibility for a living person. This distinction and the scientific definition of ectoplasm as the outer part of a cell’s cytoplasm supports the option of ectoplasm that is fleshier, like the gelatinous extrusion of fat and other material from cooking meat. This meatier ectoplasm will come out of the medium through the skin rather than being excreted through the mucus membranes and it will be more substantial.

Along side ectoplasm’s highly visual physical manifestation of the spirit world there are the psychokinetic displays associated with séances. The simplest is the request that the spirit summoned show its presence by rapping or knocking on the table around which the participants are seated or some other object in the room. The sound can also simply manifest in the air. The spirit can answer yes and no questions by knocking using one knock for yes and two for no. More complex questions can be asked using a Ouija or Spirit Board. Less helpful to the séance but more exciting are the poltergeist-like outbursts, and being fiction there can be straight up voices and even pyrokinetic displays. It is also common that called spirits may not be truthful, the one asked to appear, or a devil instead.

Mood: C.H.U.D.-tastic.
Music: When Two Worlds Collide by Iron Maiden and Love At First Bite by Wolf.

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