"The Haunting in Connecticut:" More "boo" than "boo!"

Take note, wholesome families, here are some clues that your ramshackle house might be haunted. It's a terrific bargain because, as the landlord reluctantly tells you, it has a "history." The drab walls wail and moan like the hull of a decrepit submarine. A bunch of weird stuff has been left behind, including an iron crib and a dusty tailor's form in the attic. You wake in the dead of night to a malevolent figure standing at the foot of your bed. The giveaway that you really should "get out!" is a perfectly preserved basement room full of cobwebs, barbaric surgical tools and vintage embalming equipment.

The fresh-faced family that finds just such a home in "The Haunting in Connecticut" makes the mistake of ignoring these signs until it's almost too late. Their bad judgment is our good fortune as it leads to a few genuinely spooky chills. But despite well-designed scare shots, the laborious telling of this elaborate ghost story ultimately fizzles under the weight of too much effort.

Leading the Campbell clan are Sara and Peter (Virginia Madsen and Martin Donovan), a 40ish couple struggling with the burden of bills, a mortgage and Peter's tenuous recovery from alcoholism. Their oldest son, Matt (Kyle Gallner), is seriously ill with cancer and is in an exclusive — and expensive — trial treatment at a hospital way too far from home. The rental house they find in suburban Connecticut seems a great temporary solution, except for all its bizarre trappings.

In addition to fashioning a convincing haunted house, director Peter Cornwell stages early scenes with manipulative aplomb that nicely set a tone of supernatural dread. Madsen and Donovan are credibly pained as parents of a terminally ill child who may be hallucinating the house's paranormal history as a side effect of his debilitating therapy.

The unknowable is always more disturbing in a horror movie, so when "Haunting" starts explaining too much the scares are noticeably lessened. That said, several puzzling details are left hanging in a seriously overwrought flight to the finale.

Ted Fry: tedfry@hotmail.com