Screenplay Structure Analysis
A Haunting in Connecticut
A mother moves her cancer-stricken teenage son into a rental house near his hospital, only to discover the home was once a funeral parlor—and the dead have never left.
Tone
Relentlessly escalating dread with grounded family drama; visceral body horror intertwined with grief and desperation
Tension curve
Dramatic intensity across A Haunting in Connecticut from first page to last, sampled at 40 points on a 0–10 scale. Values: 4.5, 4.3, 4.6, 5.3, 6.1, 6.3, 6.2, 6.2, 6.2, 6.3, 6.2, 6, 5.8, 6.3, 6.9, 6.8, 6.3, 5.8, 5.7, 6.1, 5.8, 5.5, 5.3, 5.7, 6.6, 7.1, 7.3, 7.2, 6.6, 6.9, 7.3, 8, 7.9, 7.7, 7.6, 7.8, 8.2, 8.8, 8.3, 7.9.
Structure at a glance
- Inciting incident
- Page 8, 8% of the script: Sara pulls up to a purple Victorian house and asks realtor Mr. Singh about the rent while Matt receives multiple injections during his treatment.
- Act 1 break
- Page 26, 24% of the script: Matt begins experiencing violent supernatural visions during chemotherapy, marking the shift from mundane horror (the house's history) to active haunting.
- Midpoint
- Page 58, 54% of the script: Matt drops the photos and picks them up; Wendy opens the notebook finding strange languages and diagrams, then discovers seance photographs showing Jonah in mid-possession with ectoplasm streaming from his body.
- Act 2 break
- Page 75, 70% of the script: Popescu's exorcism fails and he flees with Jonah's remains, leaving the family defenseless as the spirits fully take control of Matt.
- Climax
- Page 104, 97% of the script: Sara runs into the collapsing burning house, sees the walls filled with burning tattooed corpses and hideous forms, throws herself through flames to grab Matt/Jonah, and shields him as the ceiling collapses.
- Peak tension
- 8.8 out of 10, reached about 95% of the way through; the script averages 6.5.
- Average scene length
- 1.1 pages
Structural personality
This script operates as a pressure-cooker horror, using an average scene length of just over one page to create relentless forward momentum. The structure is deceptively classical—three acts with clear breaks—but the pacing is pure paranormal thriller: short, sharp scenes that escalate without pause. Act One (scenes 1-44) establishes the family's desperation and the house's sinister history through rapid cross-cutting between Sara's exhaustion, Matt's illness, and creeping supernatural reveals. The turn at scene 44 is visceral: Matt's chemo-induced hallucinations become indistinguishable from genuine hauntings. Act Two (scenes 45-131) is an investigative descent, with Wendy and Matt uncovering Aickman's necromancy while the house attacks the family in waves—each assault more aggressive than the last. The second act break at scene 131 is devastating: Popescu's ritual not only fails but unleashes the spirits fully, and Matt becomes possessed. Act Three (scenes 132-199) is pure survival horror as the family fights to save Matt and themselves from the inscribed dead. The script's genius is in its refusal to pause—199 scenes across 107 pages means no scene overstays its welcome, and the horror compounds geometrically rather than episodically.
Pacing
The pacing is breathless and unrelenting, with scene length rarely exceeding two pages. Early scenes (1-20) establish baseline reality quickly, then the script begins intercutting past and present (scene 53 introduces the 1927 séance) to layer dread. The middle section (scenes 60-110) uses rapid montage and split-focus sequences—Matt playing hide-and-seek while Mary falls through the attic floor (scenes 102-105), Wendy's research intercut with flashbacks (scenes 108-110)—to create disorientation. The final act (scenes 160-199) is almost real-time chaos: Matt escapes the psych ward, the family is locked out, and the house becomes a death trap. The script never lets the audience or characters catch their breath, mirroring the family's exhaustion and Matt's physical deterioration.
Themes
- The cost of survival and parental sacrifice
- Death as unfinished business
- The violation of the boundary between life and death
- Faith tested by suffering
- Family bonds under extreme duress
Similar shapes
Screenplays whose tension curve most closely matches A Haunting in Connecticut.
- The Substance by Coralie Fargeat
- Lights Out by Eric Heisserer
- The Babadook by Jennifer Kent
Scene summaries and structural markers are generated by AI analysis of the screenplay text and may contain minor inaccuracies. ScriptGraph analyzes structure and does not reproduce screenplay text.
Compare A Haunting in Connecticut with another screenplay · Browse all 156 analyzed screenplays