Horror Movie Review: The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013)

The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia…wait, there is something off about that title.

Connecticut – Georgia. Last I checked my map of America, Connecticut was in the East of the USA & Georgia was to the South. They are two different states. The name of this movie is bloody stupid & completely unnecessary when you consider that they could have just gone with ‘The Haunting in Georgia’. They could than use the prefix ‘The Haunting in….’ for any more sequels.

…but no, some fool in marketing thought they had to have some sort of link to the first film even though the the only related thing is ghosts. If that’s how we’re linking these films than we might as well include every haunting movie ever.

Dumb name aside, Ghosts of Georgia claims to be based on true events. The events that inspired this film are based around the Wyrick family who moved to Ellersile, Georgia. Their young daughter was supposedly a psychic who started to see the ghost of an elderly man called Gordy around their property.

She was able to identify him & another through photographs even though she had never seen them before. As time went by she began to see other spirits including one particular dark spirit that reportedly attacked the girl in her sleep.

That’s the story in a nutshell…hardly worth making a movie out of. Well it does say based because other than the ghost Gordy & the family there is little else to connect the two.

In the movie the family move to their new house & the young girl begins talking to Mr Gordy. It seems as though she is not the only gifted person in this house as her Aunt & mother also share the ghostly sight. However, the mother suppresses hers with medication not wanting to accept what she sees.

More & more ghosts turn up, slaves that were hidden in an underground railroad. Eventually their bodies are discovered deep below & their spirits set free. However, there was another spirit down there…an evil spirit who has been released now.

Holy shit, if you thought the first film took things to an unbelievable level than you’re going to get a kick of the madness that ensues here. Ghosts of Georgia has the dumbest, laughable & cringe-inducing final third that I’ve ever seen in a ghost/haunting movie. It’s so over the top with a twist that will just leave you scratching your head in confusion. Wait? Why? Huh? Did he? When?

You won’t care about getting the answers though as it’s clear the creators got tired of their poor attempts at subtle scares & thought, fuck it, let’s throw everything we can at the wall & see what sticks.

I loathe to even use the word scare when describing this film because it doesn’t deserve it. I’ve seen scarier things on children’s TV than anything here. The acting is painfully average with no convincing reactions from anyone! Everything is perfectly set-up for a scene later on…oh look, they just found an animal trap, I wonder if that will come into play later? Oh look, a tree where a man was hung…I wonder if we’ll be visiting that later…and so on.

The thing is it has a great idea that it just mishandles badly. A ghost story surrounding slavery in deep south America is a really interesting idea but here it just paves the way for a comical bad guy whose motivations make no sense at all.

Incredibly disappointing.