Weekly round-up

Inuit encounters and generic scares

DEATHLY DULL: The Haunting in Connecticut

by MALCOLM FRASER
and MATTHEW HAYS

Before Tomorrow
Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn concocted two stunning aboriginal films, Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. Here they share the producer title, while Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu codirect. Before Tomorrow is a complex intersection of European and Inuit storytelling, based on a book by Danish author Jorn Riel. By telling the ostensibly simple story of first contact between a group of Inuit and European explorers, the filmmakers attempt to tell us something about how this clash of civilizations shaped history and humankind.

CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS: Before Tomorrow

Set in the mid-19th century, Before Tomorrow has two native elders, played by Ivalu and Mary Qulitalik, tending to the young and making food for the community. But Ivalu is worried, as Qulitalik is ill and seems to be worsening. Adding to an overall sense of things not moving in the right direction are the stories of increasing numbers of contacts with European settlers. Beautifully performed and gorgeously shot, Before Tomorrow forms a loose trilogy with Atanarjuat and Knud Rasmussen, earning a richly deserved best feature award at the Toronto International Film Fest in September. An elegiac look back at a key historical moment, that somehow manages to feel entirely contemporary at the same time. With a kickass soundtrack by the McGarrigle Sisters. (MH)

The Haunting in Connecticut
It must be tough to be a horror filmmaker these days. If you don’t feel like pushing the limits of torture porn, ripping off J-horror tropes, remaking an ’80s flick or (God forbid) actually trying something creative, what are you gonna do? Well, you could make something like The Haunting in Connecticut, whose prosaic title belies its pedestrian content.

Virginia Madsen and Martin Donovan play a beleaguered couple who rent a house in the titular state, the better to be close to a hospital that’s giving experimental treatment to their cancer-stricken teenage son Matt (Kyle Gallner). The house turns out to be haunted, and the combination of ghosts and a dying kid gives the filmmakers the chance to alternate two easy sets of clichés—generic scares on the one hand, shameless tear-jerking on the other. The question of what happened in the house gets dragged out to an unsatisfying finale.

The lazy editing, banal score and crappy script are irritating, but the worst part of this film is seeing the actors struggle to maintain their dignity. Madsen was an Oscar nominee for Sideways, and Donovan was way cool in his Hal Hartley days; whether this was a bad judgement call or they just needed some cash, they seem painfully aware of the poor material they’re working with. Elias Koteas also does his fighting best to summon his considerable chops in the deus ex machina role of a clairvoyant priest. First-time director Peter Cornwell could win a prize for Most Actorly Talent Squandered. (MF)

BOTH FILMS OPEN THIS FRIDAY,
MARCH 27