`Haunting' story is thin as a ghost.

Byline: Daniel M. Kimmel

COLUMN: MOVIE REVIEW

At the start of "The Haunting in Connecticut" we're told it is "based on the true story." Note that it's not "a true story," but "the true story." In spite of this certainty, in the area of docudramas, this makes some of Oliver Stone's more outlandish entries look like sober news reports.

The Campbell family is in crisis. The teenage son, Matt (Kyle Gallner), has cancer and is receiving an experimental treatment many miles away from home. So parents Sara (Virginia Madsen) and Peter (Martin Donovan) decide they will rent a house in Connecticut so they and their extended family can live closer to Matt's treatments. Sara lucks into a really good deal. The reason it's such a good deal is that the house is a former mortuary, and it is haunted.

Who's doing the haunting and why is the mystery to be solved, and so it won't be revealed here. What starts as a few shadows or glimpses of people who aren't there soon turns into full-fledged visions out of the past. Are these for real, or is this a side effect of Matt's treatment? Another cancer patient, the Rev. Popescu (Elias Koteas), tells Matt that people who are at death's door can see both the worlds of the living and the dead, the way the rest of us cannot. Well, at least most of the time.

That's the problem. The filmmakers keep changing the rules on us, setting up one situation only to suddenly give us something else. In the climactic action, we're led to believe that a little girl is trapped in the house, and then, amazingly, she is not referred to again, even though she is a member of the family. That's only one example of the narrative sloppiness here.

With actors Madsen, Donovan and Koteas the film has stronger performances than might be expected or, indeed, are warranted by the material. Koteas probably comes off best, but Madsen and Donavan both get scenes in which they get to emote. Those may have been the high points of the shooting schedule for them, but they won't be remembered at Oscar time.

Young Gallner has the difficult role here and carries it off. If you find yourself caring about the outcome, it will largely be because he takes Matt's physical and psychological pain seriously.

However, the story is just plain silly. In spite of the claim of truth, audiences are expected to believe that a prominent undertaker would also conduct public seances, and then, on top of that, evil magical experiments. That might work in, say, an H.P. Lovecraft type of story, but in a docudrama it's a lot to swallow. The numerous corpses and body parts in various states of disfigurement and decomposition simply add to the overall seedy atmosphere.

"The Haunting in Connecticut" is a disposable horror film, made in hopes that some reputable actors might breathe life into the material. Don't blame the cast, though. This was something that should have been buried at the outset. `The Haunting in Connecticut'

*1/2

A Lionsgate release

Rating: PG-13 for some intense sequences of terror and disturbing images

Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes

ART: PHOTO

CUTLINE: Virginia Madsen gets to emote in "The Haunting in Connecticut" as the mother of a cancer-stricken teen played by Kyle Gallner.