The Haunting in the least scary sounding state possible

Movie • THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT • 2009
I was invited to a good friend's house for a "Fright Night" evening of scary movies the other night. We voted on which movie to watch, and luckily it was the one movie in her entire collection I hadn't already seen.
The new fashion in ghost story movies is to find some "true story," and twist the truth just enough (like a braided string of licorice) to turn the unappetizing facts into a bag of Twizzlers. The Haunting in Connecticut really wasn't all that bad :)
I haven't loved contemporary scary movies the way I love classic scary movies, but for this kind of movie The Haunting In Connecticut was better than most. There was a nice build up of creepiness that I enjoyed like a bag of caramel cowtails.
A family must relocate to be closer to a specific treatment center for the son. He's got the ills, and his chemotherapy and experimental treatment wreak havoc on his mother's driving skills. She makes the "executive decision" to rent the creepiest looking over-sized house possible. It turns out to be an old funeral home where seances were held. There's more about the mortician, and his mummifying, and thieving of the bodies (this is where all the great images come from).
The son, Matt is slowly learning more about what happened through visitations from Jonah, the spirit medium who reluctantly helped steal the bodies. Not sure why he had to stick around to watch the mortician carve his diary into the bodies, but he did.
With everything they witness, I'm not sure why the family continues to stay. They are just as slow to react as the families in Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, and Burnt Offerings.

It's quite enjoyable for a few good jumps and goosebumps.

Totally invited… come on in!

Movie • THE UNINVITED • 2007
Twilight really put me off for a bit. I was so ghastly disappointed in it (book, movie, phenomenon, etc.) that I've all but stayed in my corner cowering from what might come after that. LOL, just kidding! I was baking cookies - lots of cookies :)
Recently, I had to fly on a real live airplane (not a pterodactyl), and I decided to catch an in-flight picture. There weren't many choices, so I decided upon a movie that was only recently released - one I'd originally intended to skip. Contemporary fright films are beginning to annoy me, and I'd rather be eating cob-webs on my crumpets that sit through another.

But Wait!

I sat through Hollywood's The Uninvited" for almost an hour before I realized I was hooked, but hooked the way you might be hooked watching 90210 or The OC. I wasn't there for the spook, nor the fright, nor the shivers. I liked the main character, and I wanted to know how she was going to resolve her issues.

By the end, I was attacked by the creepers. My spine tingled, my eyes welled up, my jaw dropped on the floor… literally. The flight attendant ask me to store it in the over-head compartment after that.

The story was very basic, but as the best stories go: keep it simple, stupid. Sure there were a few cheap scares, but I blame modern audiences, and their demand for crooked, disfigured spirits in anything that's supposed to resemble a ghost story.

I recommend watching The Uninvited thrice!

highlight the text below for bonus spoilerish information:
I klonked my noggin over and over when I realized that The Uninvited is a retelling or remake of the Korean film, A Tale of Two Sisters. There's even a Japanese version of The Uninvited! Now that I think about it, it reminds me of Alice Sweet Alice too!

I'm a buff, not an expert! Here's my review of the Korean version :)

Blood is prettier than water

Movie • A TALE OF TWO SISTERS • 2003
A Tale of Two Sisters is another Korean movie. They have a knack for confusing me, even with the simplest of plots. Story-telling is a cultural thing, and I'm just not used to seeing stories told this way. Gobs of it was plain weirdness for what seemed like the sake of weirdness. Then suddenly, one line is delivered that sent tingles down my spine. Su-mi’s father says something toward the end that puts everything into perspective… mostly.
Su-mi and Su-yeon are sisters forced to live with their new “mother.” She and their father seem like an unlikely couple, and she apparently has a problem with these children. There is a lot of high-pitched yelling between the girls and their dad and step-mom; so keep your finger on the volume control if you don’t want a headache.
A Tale of Two Sisters is beautifully filmed, and every frame would make it into a frame on my wall if I had the space. But it seems a lot of the images are confusing to the story. I was never certain, even at the end whether the time-line jumped around or was the story in her mind… or her mind… or her mind… or his mind… or was it an explanation? Either way, if I hadn’t have watched it alone it would have been one of those great movies to discuss. What did this mean? What did that mean?
I recommend it to people who fancy subtitles and plot confusion. Come on, you can handle it.

Ruby’s ghost tale is a gem

Book • LILY’S GHOSTS • Laura Ruby • 2003
I was perusing the kids’ section at my local mom & pop bookstore and found this prize amongst the crème de la crème. It’s actually for mature young readers, but all-ages enjoyable.
Not to be confused with our good friend, LilyBat the vampire girl, Lily is a young girl who lives with her mom. Always on the move, they’ve settled in at Lily’s uncle’s house on the tiptoe of New Jersey in Cape May. Lily makes friends, living and dead fairly quickly, but there is a mystery to solve. Every good ghost story involves a mystery, but we get to have a run-in with a pirate’s ghost and his treasure too - crikey!
Yo-ho, scallywags! This young adult book doesn’t treat you like a baby, so prepare for real family issues and problems that aren’t diluted or ignored. Single mothers and their daughters have real feelings. So do local misfit boys and ghosts.
It gets a little far-fetched at the end. I’m not talking about ghostly happenings, though. We all know that’s real. I was just a little amused by the motivations of some of the characters. Don’t worry, it didn’t do me head in thinking about it. Get your claws on a copy of this book!

Tha Saragossa ghosta

Movie • THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT • 1965
I got to see this on the large screen this weekend. I’d never heard of it before, but it’s apparently a favorite of Martin Scorsese, Luis Buñuel, and Jerry Garcia. I was grateful to see it to say the least, but I can’t count it amongst my favorites. I don’t mind watching a 3 hour movie with subtitles, but The Saragossa Manuscript got awfully confusing.
It’s simple enough to follow at first. An officer finds a book in an abandoned building in the middle of a battle. He begins to read about a soldier who meets a couple of beautiful ghosts who claim to be related to him… but also want to marry him… both of them. Is it every man’s fantasy to marry two ghosts? The ghosts and all the other characters he meets tell him tales from the past to lead him to understanding his place in eternity, but that’s where it gets freaky and beyond. Each tale goes deeper by having characters that also must tell stories that begin in flashback style, but soon get so complicated themselves that you forget which story is being told by whom. It seemed convoluted for the sake of it. I imagine Jan Patocki’s novel reads the same without the humor that was injected into the film. The humor is what saved the film for me, by the way.
In the end, it all made sense… kind of, but it had to be the most convoluted ghost story I’ve ever heard. By the time you finished telling it the camp fire would have gone out, and there’d be no time for s’mores!

Undying toffee

Movie • THE UNDYING MONSTER • 1942
They shouldn’t tell you this is a werewolf movie because it’s more of a mystery, and the werewolf is part of it. I DVR’ed this a while back and tried watching it a few times. Every time I fell asleep. Nothing like a good bedtime story. That’s what I get for watching it in the middle of the day.
I finally watched it in the middle of the night when I’m wide awake. Yippee, not as boring as I thought! It’s based on the novel of the same name by Jesse Douglas Kerruish. I bet it’s a pretty good read, and would make a scrumptious gift ;)
It’s all about the secrets in this movie so I’m going to recommend it to Betty Bones. She loves secrets. It’s funny how everyone is devious and mysterious until the end when it’s all solved. Then they couldn’t be more chummy… even though people died.
My hero in this was Ms. Cornelia Christopher or ‘Christi’ as they called her. She multi-tasked investigating monsters and making what looked like a delicious batch of cappuccino and toffee using equipment from the laboratory. She’s always famished, and she makes a good point when she says, “Lunch comes but once a day.” She grins when she hears clanking chains, and when she finds out there’s a crypt in the house. She’s my kind of gal. I shivered when she declared, “Monster? Now we’re getting somewhere.” Her enthusiasm for monsters and dessert won me over, but her taste in decor was brilliant too. She described Helga’s mansion as a “divinely gloomy old house.” Helga is the heir to the Hammond fortune, but that’s plot stuff I won’t bother you with.
Watch this movie with a plate of toffee and remember… When the stars are bright on a frosty night, beware the bane on a rocky lane.

NIN • Ghosts I-IV

Music • NIN • Ghosts I-IV • 2008
I just downloaded this album (legally of course) after finally receiving my download link. The purchase timed out, but it took my money. It took a few days for their support to send my proper download link, but I’m happy it finally arrived.
This is an experimental album that takes NIN in a moody direction. The song groups work well together, and they definitely take you away to a place that feels gloomy and hopeful at the same time. I even recognized lots of sections of his older work.
I got the feeling this music was about invading robot aliens from beyond Pluto. It was like a soundtrack all the way through. Probably why Trent Reznor has invited fans to make videos inspired by the music.