DVD £15.99/Blu-ray £22.99

Starring: Dakota Blue Richards, Ioan Gruffudd, Natascha McElhone, Tim Curry, Juliet Stevenson, Augustus Prew, Michael Webber, Andy Linden.

THIRTEEN-year-old orphan Maria Merryweather (Richards) is forced to seek lodgings with her gruff uncle, Sir Benjamin Merryweather (Gruffudd), on the isolated Moonacre Valley estate.

Accompanied by dithering governess Miss Heliotrope (Stevenson), Maria arrives at the estate carrying her inheritance: a leather-bound copy of The Ancient Chronicles Of Moonacre Valley, which reveals her family’s dark history including the doomed marriage of Sir Wrolf Merryweather (also played by Gruffudd) and the Moon Princess (McElhone).

The girl learns that she must locate a set of enchanted pearls or the entire valley will be destroyed, which is exactly what scheming Sir William De Noir (Curry) and his vengeful family want.

The Secret Of Moonacre is an exceedingly gloomy tale of thwarted love, adapted from the children’s classic The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.

Performances are more wooden than some of the sets. Richards struggles to make her tyke endearing and Stevenson’s jittery comedy routine falls flat, while Gruffudd delivers his lines as if he is hearing them for the first time. Digital trickery melds awkwardly with the live action, especially in the watery climax, which cannot arrive soon enough.

Rating: **

The Haunting In Connecticut (Cert 15, 98 mins)

DVD £19.99/Blu-ray £24.99

Starring: Martin Donovan, Virginia Madsen, Kyle Gallner, Elias Koteas, Erik J Berg.

BASED on a true story, Peter Cornwell’s supernatural thriller revolves around a close-knit family pushed to the brink by unseen forces in their new home.

Peter Campbell (Donovan) and his wife Sara (Madsen) move to upstate Connecticut with their family into a Victorian home with a dark past.

The building used to be a funeral parlour, and the old owner’s son Jonah (Berg) was a conduit for evil, bridging the divide between the real and the spirit worlds.

When Jonah returns to wreak havoc on the Campbells, the parents struggle to keep their family together as their eldest son Matt (Gallner), who is dying of cancer and needs regular radiation therapy, suffers the brunt of the visitations.

In desperation, the Campbells turn to local holy man Reverend Popescu (Koteas) to banish the evil from their home.

The Haunting In Connecticut is a ghost story by numbers with the requisite number of cheap scares (animals or protagonists leaping unexpectedly out of the dark) and some competently orchestrated spectral visitations.

Performances are merely adequate, shoe-horned between copious flashbacks. There isn’t a single narrative surprise in the entire 98 minutes, apart from perhaps how reckless and stupid the Campbells are, residing in a house steeped in so much bloody and barbaric history.

Of course the family cannot leave otherwise there would be no film – perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Rating: **

Cadillac Records (Cert 15, 104 mins)

DVD £15.99/Blu-ray £24.99

Starring: Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Cedric The Entertainer, Columbus Short, Eamonn Walker, Mos Def, Beyonce Knowles.

DARNELL Martin’s dramatisation of the rise of legendary blues label Chess Records steps back in time to the 1940s, when guitar man Muddy Waters (Wright) abandons the fields of Mississippi to chase his dreams of stardom.

Meanwhile, Polish emigre Leonard Chess (Brody) opens a bar on the south side of Chicago, where he can play music by upcoming blues combos.

Leonard launches his own label and eagerly signs Muddy to the fold, along with Big Willie Dixon (Cedric The Entertainer), Howlin’ Wolf (Walker) and Chuck Berry (Def).

Fittingly for a film which sings the blues, Cadillac Records is a rather downbeat nostalgia trip full of woe, jealousy and betrayal.

Writer-director Martin evokes the era with the changing hairstyles, fashions and furnishings, but his script is unfocused, cluttered with too many characters who clamour for our limited attention.

Most of the cast sing their alter ego’s tracks including I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man, No Particular Place To Go and Nadine.

Brody and Wright get lost amid all of the musical performances and art direction, but the star turn is Knowles, as Etta Jones, also one of the film’s producers, who is mesmerising as the self-destructive songbird.

Rating: ***