Hidey-Ho, Horror nuts and welcome to another
WTFHM!!
So, like, last week I mentioned that I’d see
The Haunting in Connecticut, which I had, but for some reason, I couldn’t seem to remember a darned thing about the movie. So, for the sake of this blog and, thinking initially there might be some connection between this week’s movie and that one, I suffered through it once more…
...and very quickly remembered why the details of the first movie eluded me. It was...well, that is to say…
I wouldn’t go
THAT far, but honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot to remember. There’s a kid with cancer in a haunted house that used to be a funeral home and then this kid happened...
And then, it was over.
Fortunately, I can’t say the same thing about part two. Let me explain…
A Haunting in Connecticut Part 2: Ghosts of Georgia starring Abigail Spencer, Morgana Shaw, Emily Alyn Lind, Chad Michael Murray, Grant James, Lance E. Nicholls, Jaren Mitchell, Katee Sackoff, Brad James, Lauren Pennington, Sam Polin, and Cicely Tyson.
All right, so, once upon a time in Georgia--
Wait, wait, I know. I saw the sign on the way in too. I don’t know why the same guys that did the last movie decided to call this movie a sequel. The two movies only have two things in common; They’re ghost stories and they’re based on true stories. Other than that, this is a completely different movie. Kind of like the third
Halloween...or the second
Nightmare on Elm Street...or the second
Prom Night.
Okay, I’ll quit showing off.
So, anyway, once upon a time in Georgia there lived the Wyrick family, Andy (Murray), Lisa (Spencer) and little Heidi (Lind). Lisa sees dead people, but she takes special *Anti-Dead” pills and her visions go away.
Andy, Lisa, and Heidi and their cowboy boots have all moved to a nice little house on a large acre of land. Almost immediately after they get there Lisa’s sister Joyce (Sackoff) pulls up in her cowboy boots and is all:
Andy’s less than thrilled, but he relents once she explains that her boyfriend and her didn’t work out and thus, she needs a place to stay for a while. Andy tells her she can stay in the dirty old camper by the house and she’s totally cool with it.
In the meantime, Heidi sees an old man on the property...that no one else sees. Heidi tells her mom about him and tells her that on their property there was a swing and some money hidden in the garden. They find a tree where a swing used to be and Joyce and Andy are like:
But Lisa’s like “Whatever. Quit imagining things, kid.”
Later that night, Joyce sits down with Heidi and explains to her that what she saw was real because she can see dead people and she knows she can see dead people because Heidi’s mama can see dead people and their mama could see dead people and even Joyce can see dead people.
Heidi’s like:
And Joyce is like:
But then, she’s like: “Don’t tell your mom. She’s got problems.”
Okay, so, sometime later they get a visit from the local pastor, Pastor Wells (Nichols), who tells Andy, Lisa, and Heidi about the history of the land that they just bought. As it happens, it was owned by a Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad.
I should hope all of you know what that is, but for the sake of exposition, Pastor Wells gives Heidi a quick Black History 101 lesson on the Underground Railroad. He also explains that the previous owner, Mr. Gordy, wasn’t too happy about his great-great-grandfather helping slaves and was kind of a jerk.
Heidi: “Mr. Gordy’s nice to me!”
Pastor Wells: “What?”
Andy: “Boy, it’s getting late. Time to go, Pastor!”
All right, so sometime after that, Andy brings home a dog, that immediately runs off into the woods and gets lost. Andy goes after him and finds him stuck in an ancient trap that was apparently left on the property since 1898. He gets him out and tells Lisa about it. Lisa says to find the rest of them and get rid of them. While he’s destroying the trap, he hears Heidi off talking to somebody. He asks who and she tells him that Mr. Gordy says somebody’s coming.
Andy searches the grounds and finds a man, Prentiss(James) and an old woman, Mama Kay (Tyson). Andy freaks out, but they tell him they were invited by Joyce, who found an old blanket that was used as a marker on the railroad. The blanket, apparently, belonged to their relatives.
Mama Kay talks to Heidi while Andy goes walking with Prentiss. Mama Kay tells Heidi: “Hey, you can see dead people right?”
She’s all, “Yeah!”
Mama Kay’s like:
Anyway, Prentiss tells Andy that Mama Kay’s relatives were supposed to meet up with the stationmaster all those years ago, but they disappeared. He also tells him that the stationmaster was a taxidermist and when the townspeople found out about his hiding slaves, they stuffed him with sawdust and hung him.
Fast forward to later. Andy sits Joyce and Lisa down tells them what Prentiss told him about the stationmaster. Later, while Lisa is giving Heidi a bath, Heidi asks what they were talking about and Lisa tells her everything sans the gory details. She tells Heidi that he was a good man that did good things and Heidi’s like, no he’s not.
Lisa’s like, “Don’t start with me on that imaginary crap.”
Heidi’s all, “But it’s the truth!”
Lisa’s like, “No it isn’t, stupid child. Get out of the tub, dammit.”
And she leaves the room. After a while, when she doesn’t hear her and Heidi hasn’t come out, she goes in the bathroom to check on her only to find her floating face down in the water. She pulls her out and Heidi spits up maggots and sawdust. Lisa freaks out and takes her to the hospital.
At the hospital, Andy shows up and asks what happened. Lisa’s all, “She just threw up a little bit”. The nurse was like, “Yeah, sawdust and maggots.”
Andy’s like: “What?”
Lisa’s like: “Huh?”
And the nurse is like; “Ya’ll need therapy...or a priest or something.”Hey, that’s a great idea, they think and they call up Pastor Wells and has him do a blessing on Heidi which, by the way, isn’t like any Christian blessing I’ve ever seen, but, yeah, whatever.
Anyway, during the “blessing” in the woods under a full moon, Joyce starts seeing dead people, which freaks her out. Specifically she sees the slaves that were on the grounds before...and she sees her family decomposing. Fun stuff.
Okay, so, later Heidi wakes up to follow one of the ghosts out of the house. Lisa wakes up from a nightmare and realizes she’s gone. She calls the police while Andy goes out looking for her. He finds that she’s fallen down a man-made hole...covered in a really heavy slab. Andy files that away and sets about rescuing his daughter.
Heidi’s in the hole, freaked out, telling her dad that something is down there with her. Andy manages to get down there and they find the remains of bodies, presumably, the slaves the stationmaster was supposed to have rescued.
The police eventually find them and the bodies in the hole. The family goes back home and Heidi tells them, “I don’t want to stay here.”
Joyce is all, but you’re safe now! And Heidi’s like, “No, I’m not. There was a thing in that hole with me and he knows we’re here so we need to dip out before he comes to get us.”
Lisa is like, “Girl, go to bed. Stop talking about imaginary people already!” And Andy is like…”Um...Maybe we should listen to the kid.”
I know!
They never listen to the kid! But that fall in the hole has handed Andy the full program and he’s like, “Babe, let’s dip out.”
Lisa’s like, “Why? Just because of Heidi’s imaginary friends?”
Yeah. I know. And clearly Andy knows, too, because he brought receipts to this argument and points out that Heidi’s “imaginary friend” told her about the swing and money in the garden, and she threw up maggots and sawdust less than a minute ago and fell down a hole with a giant heavy slab over it that she could not have moved to get into the hole in the first place and hey, guess what?
THERE WERE BODIES IN A FRICKEN HOLE IN THE GROUND BY THE HOUSE. Lisa’s like, “This is stupid.”
Andy starts packing.
So, Andy manages to convince Lisa that this is the right move and the next night they start packing up to leave. While they’re packing, the dog runs off again (
worse dog ever). Andy tells Heidi to wait in the car while he looks for the dog.
Joyce, in the meantime, is chilling in her dirty trailer when the ghost slaves warn her that the “bad man” is coming. She sees him and tries screaming for Heidi to warn her. The Bad Man sees her and starts walking her way. She runs into her dirty trailer.
Okay, so, all jokes aside, this part is pretty cool. We’re treated to a bunch of shaking the trailer moments before...Well, honestly I don’t even know how to describe it. I guess you could say he left her in stitches. (rimshot)
All right, so after that the Bad Man, presumably the evil ghost of the stationmaster, comes after Heidi. Lisa is warned by a ghost who points her in the direction of the sound of breaking glass. Lisa finds the car with broken windows and Heidi is gone. Andy shows up just in time to see her freaking out. They split up to look for her.
Lisa runs off to Joyce’s trailer where she kicks open and door and...again it defies explanation.
She manages to cut her down and the strings disappeared like POOF. She asks her sister where Heidi is and her sister says through a mouthful of maggots that she’s with
hiiiim. So Lisa tries to take some more happy pills, but her sister takes them from her and instructs her to follow the ghost people to her daughter.
Lisa does and finds her in the hole, which, as it turns out has lots more bodies hidden there, including Mama Kay’s relatives. Then...well, she trips and her lantern falls and catches the place on fire. I only mention that because I forgot that even happened because there’s no real indication of said fire for the rest of this scene. Except it’s not dark anymore.
But anyway, the stationmaster ghost finds her just as she finds a way out. She gets Heidi out and the stationmaster is just about to...I don’t know, scare her to death when she sees the ghost of her mother who gives her a play by play of the stationmaster’s history, which would have been interesting except Lisa was swimming in happy pills for this whole movie, so, she missed out on what we all knew already.
So, Lisa, finally having a chance to properly review the program properly is able to escape because now she acknowledges the ghosts in the hole. The ghosts surround the stationmaster and he goes whoosh in a big tornado.
Two weeks later, Andy’s putting in a new swing, Joyce is perfectly fine, and Lisa has stopped taking her happy pills. Per the afterword, Lisa and Heidi never see visions again. We even get treated to a picture of the real people this story is based on.
So, what do I give this one? Well, I guess I give it a jewel. I mean, it had it’s problem, but it wasn’t...bad, really. Maybe just a pink jewel this time.
Next week...is a surprise! In all my haste, I completely forgot to get a new movie for the week. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what’s next!
See you next time!
O~
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