If you move into a haunted house, there are some basic rules you should follow.

Embrace your eco-friendly side and DO NOT enter bathtubs and showers.

DO NOT enter basements or attics. Especially if you hear a noise in either place.

If you're a kid, DO NOT play hide-and-seek.

If you're an adult, DO NOT leave the kids home alone.

And for Pete's sake, DO NOT look into mirrors.

Of course, "The Haunting in Connecticut" breaks all of these rules and a few more that merely require common sense given the context of your basic horror-movie formula. Still, it's a respectful stab at the genre with some effectively creepy touches amid the requisite hokey ones.

The filmmakers tout it as being based on a true story in order to boost the frisson level. Viewers should approach it as just another story about a bunch of clueless victims terrorized by restless spirits.

Virginia Madsen and Martin Donovan play Sara and Peter Campbell, the parents of three children including a teenage son (Kyle Gallner) stricken with cancer. They're also the wards of two nieces.

Matt, the cancer patient, has to be driven long and debilitating distances for treatment. The Campbells are financially strapped with medical bills and a couple of mortgages.

Despite their financial constraints, they decide to rent a spacious, affordable house near the treatment center without heeding the old axiom: If it sounds too good to be true then it is.

After some exploration, they discover that the house was once a mortuary and further investigation reveals that its owner was a mad mortician experimenting in the occult. Because of his fragile condition, Matt becomes the target of the house's main spirit.

The restless wraith is a young man who was once part of the mortician's experiments. The movie's spookiest moments involve the manifestation of ectoplasm, the weird supernatural matter produced during seances.

Enter the Rev. Popescu, played with ethereal gravitas by Elias Koteas. He's a fellow cancer patient and an expert on the occult, and he signs on with the Campbells as a learned ghostbuster. Director Peter Cornwell uses him as a visual nod to Max von Sydow in "The Exorcist."

The best vintage ghost-story movies rely on subtlety and complexity. The many successful adaptations of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" rely on the battle for the souls of two innocent children between a nanny and two depraved spirits.

This time around, the filmmakers try to give some subtext to the thrills with references to the father's alcoholism and the family's overall emotional turmoil and financial troubles. But they inevitably succumb to today's box-office demands.

Contemporary horror fans aren't looking for a meditation on the loss of innocence or the unpredictable consequences of the mind. They want crispy critters, the walking dead, frenzied bird flocks (OK, Hitchcock pulled it off, but he's special) and crawling maggots.

Cornwell delivers on all these counts to the movie's detriment. What is a capably acted movie with some interesting moments ultimately crashes and burns.