10 Best Movies Set In Connecticut, Ranked

Connecticut is one of the smallest, and more anonymous, of the 50 American states. With New York to the west of us and Boston to the east, the Nutmeg State has an unavoidable vibe of being stuck between two actually interesting places. I’m a lifelong Connecticuter, but I can’t say we share the same fervor of statewide pride as, say, Texas does.

If we have a statewide reputation, it’s for being a (new) haven of rich, sleepy suburbs — so no surprise that many of your favorite actors have settled in Connecticut. We gave Hollywood Katharine Hepburn, Robert Mitchum, Meg Ryan, Paul Giamatti, Seth MacFarlane, and many more. Plus, the stereotypes of the state make it a favorite for dramas and/or comedies (often both in one film) tackling suburban ennui. There’s no real town named Stars Hollow, but “Gilmore Girls” gets the Nutmeg mood right.

Actor and film historian Illeana Douglas literally wrote the book about “Connecticut in the Movies: From Dream Houses to Dark Suburbia,” looking at how many films take place in the state and classifying them by the ideas they share. Born in New Haven and raised in Old Saybrook, Douglas opens her book by writing: “Two things that have always brought me happiness are movies and Connecticut.” Perhaps if you know the best films set in the state, you could say the same.

Elizabeth Olsen has spent most of her career stuck in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Scarlet Witch (if/when she returns, no-one knows). She’s one of the better actors in that franchise’s ensemble, anchoring “WandaVision” and playing a fun campy villain in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”

But how did she climb her way up to those blockbusters? It’s not just because she has the same last name as Mary Kate & Ashley. Olsen made her film debut in the 2011 indie psychological drama “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” Martha is a young woman who has escaped from a cult and is now sheltered in her sister Lucy’s (Sarah Paulson) Connecticut lake house.

The film uses a dual timeline, showing how Martha was indoctrinated in the past and, in the present, still hasn’t been deprogrammed. Martha’s unbalanced mood plays into greater feelings of anxiety. Watching “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” your eyes will often be drawn to the background, as you (like Martha) can never be quite sure if she’s completely escaped or if her captors are still stalking her. From the beginning, Olsen proved she excels at playing unlikable but tragic and understandable characters — no red tiara or hex magic needed.

Celebrated filmmaker Ang Lee tried his hand at a superhero blockbuster with 2003’s “Hulk.” The movie earned mixed response at the time but, nowadays, Lee’s “Hulk” has a modest following.

But even before “Hulk,” one of Lee’s movies drew on Marvel Comics in some unexpected way. His 1997 drama “The Ice Storm” opens with a lonely teenager named Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) on a train alone, reading “Fantastic Four” comics. Paul muses that the marvelous Family’s adventures in the Negative Zone represent the American family itself; “your personal negative matter from which you emerge.”

Taking place in the 1970s, “The Ice Storm” is an ensemble drama centered around two families: the Hoods and the neighboring Carvers. Set and shot on location in New Canaan, Connecticut, the movie is about the disillusionment with suburban life as it unfolds in one of its most prosperous centers. The Watergate scandal (the death of unified faith in America) looms in the background, as out-of-love parents sleep around and kids, fallen through the cracks of their parents’ attention, try to find themselves. While ostensibly a family picture, each of the leads often stay closed off in their own little world.

Jaume Collet-Serra’s “Orphan” is a modern schlockterpiece of horror. An upper-middle class couple, Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard), are recovering from a miscarriage and decide to adopt. Their new daughter, Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), quickly turns out to be sinister, as well as a little too interested in her new daddy, but Kate is the only adult who is rightfully suspicious.

Surprise! It turns out Esther is not a child, but a 34-year-old serial killer with a growth hormone disorder; her mind has grown up, but her body always appears to be aged eight. The actor behind her, however, actually was only a child when she played Esther; her multi-layered performance foreshadowed Fuhrman becoming one of the most confident young actors working today.

The first “Orphan” film is set in Hamden, Connecticut. It was shot in Canada, but the film’s dreary, icy-cold winter setting is accurate. The prequel, “Orphan: First Kill,” moves to a different Connecticut town: Darien. One of the richest towns in the very affluent Fairfield County, Darien is a perfect setting town for the film’s themes of class. “Orphan 3” is currently in the works, so place your bets for which breed of Connecticuters Esther will menace next.

One frequent criticism is to lambast older films for “aging poorly,” whether because they depict out of date cultural values or poorly (by modern standards) criticize said values. Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need To Talk About Kevin” is now an even more difficult watch due entirely to circumstances beyond the film’s reach.

Filmed on location in Stamford, Connecticut, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” follows Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) and her relationship with her sociopathic son Kevin (Ezra Miller). The film is structured non-chronologically, jumping between Eva raising Kevin, who was already showing signs of trouble as a toddler, to the present day. There, Eva is a self-imposed town pariah — Kevin went on a rampage, shooting up his classmates at school and killing his own father and sister.

Based on a novel by Lionel Shriver, the Connecticut setting of “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is incidental, a product of filming location chosen for whatever reason. Yet the film soon became extra ominous because of the infamous mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. Tack on Ezra Miller’s offscreen criminal behavior, and the film gets uncomfortable even beyond its chilling subject matter and themes. (What would you do if your child turned out to be evil?)

The original Connecticut suburban nightmare, “The Swimmer” stars Burt Lancaster as Neddy Merrill, a well-off family man (or so he appears). While at a neighbor’s house to enjoy their pool, he comes up with a wild idea; he’ll “swim home” by stopping in for a lap at all the pools on the eight-mile path back to his home.

Sounds innocent enough, right? Wrong. Oh dear, so wrong.

Based on a short story by John Cheever, “The Swimmer” gradually reveals Neddy’s life is nowhere near as perfect as Lancaster’s sculpted physique. (The picture never shows him in anything more concealing than short swimming trunks.) The script is naturally episodic, Ned going from pool to pool and meeting different people at each. At many, he visits familiar faces and familiar, unhealed sins with them.

“The Swimmer” has a reputation as being surreal (such as how summer seems to change to autumn in the span of a day). And, however literally you interpret Ned’s odyssey and its crushing conclusion, it’s clear he’s made a mess of his life and family somehow. Watching “The Swimmer,” it feels like an older cousin of “The Irishman” and “I Saw The TV Glow” — a slowly unfurling existential horror story about a character who has let time pass by, and finds it likely too late to ever change course or repair the damage.

Screwball comedies often have mile-a-minute humor, with characters speaking over each other and growing more and more confused as mutual secret-keeping piles up. In the 1938 romantic comedy “Bringing Up Baby,” the humor’s pace is more like a mile a second. Director Howard Hawks described the picture as a comedy without a straight man foil (per Todd McCarthy’s Hawks biography, “The Grey Fox of Hollywood”). Hawks meant this as a criticism of the film, but for most others, that always escalating farce is why the movie is a classic.

Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant), a paleontologist with the Museum of Natural History, is trying to secure a grant for the museum. While on a golf course, he bumps into hyperactive socialite Susan (Katharine Hepburn), who winds up stringing him along into a series of misadventures. Case-in-point: the title suggests the raising of a child, but the titular “baby” is actually a cat — a leopard, specifically.

Wherever Susan goes, calamity follows, but David just can’t stay away from her. After an opening act set in New York City high society, the characters and the picture with them move to scenic Connecticut. The town of Westlake is fictional, but there are a few references to the real town of Bridgeport. In any case, Connecticut fits as an old money haven unspoiled by excitement — until Baby gets loose. “There never was a leopard in the whole state of Connecticut,” a disbelieving constable declares. “Well, there is now,” Susan replies.

It took “Les Miserables” for Anne Hathaway to win Best Actress at the Oscars, but her first (and well-deserved) nomination was for the human interest drama “Rachel Getting Married.” Hathaway is not the Rachel in the title (who’s played by Rosemarie DeWitt). No, she plays Rachel’s addict little sister Kym, who’s been released from rehab to attend her sibling’s wedding.

“Rachel Getting Married” was set and shot in Stamford, Connecticut. The main characters, Rachel and Kym’s bougie but unconventional Buchman family, feel authentically Fairfield County.

Director Jonathan Demme was a filmmaker renowned for his empathy. Think of how he frames Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) surrounded by men in “The Silence of the Lambs.” That sort of approach is exactly what this story needed, for it’s a fraught situation with no real villains. Add in the joint family reunion and wedding settings (scenarios that can get anyone feeling anxious or high-strung), and you’ve got a recipe for melodrama. Demme keeps the story down to earth, though, especially when it comes to Kym. She’s often selfish and a screw-up, but the movie doesn’t condemn her, not even when it turns out her addiction led her into a car crash that took her little brother’s life.

Todd Haynes is one of our living filmmaking masters; his 2023 drama “May December” is a beautiful, often hilarious introspection about why lurid stories of real trauma keep our eyes locked. That was far from his first team-up with Julianne Moore, too.

In Haynes’ “Far From Heaven,” Moore plays Cathy Whitaker, a housewife in 1950s Hartford, Connecticut who discovers her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) is living in the closet. Naturally alienated from him, Cathy begins to find solace in the arms of a Black gardener named Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert).

The picture is a homage to the melodramas of director Douglas Sirk, who was making films during the decade “Far From Heaven” takes place. For their period piece, Haynes and his usual DP Edward Lachman recreate Sirk’s palette: suburbia candy-coated in beautiful technicolor light. But with the distance of time, “Far From Heaven” can be more honest and introspective about the social dynamics — racism and repression — at play.

The Sirk film that invites the most comparisons is “All That Heaven Allows,” which centers on a middle-aged widow (Jane Wyman) who falls for her arborist (Rock Hudson), a poorer man and one around the age of her adult children. “Far From Heaven” gets thornier, as both Frank and then Cathy try to cling onto the privilege their true desire would deny them. Haynes’ Connecticut may be beautiful, but it is indeed far from being Heaven.

“All About Eve” follows the rise of an aspiring actor, but do not be deceived by the Biblical innocence suggested in her name. Eve (Anne Baxter) is more like the snake that deceived Adam. She has her eyes on being a star and as she climbs up, she’ll throw anyone down — including her mentor Margo Channing (Bette Davis) — while still wearing the face of an angel. While Margo’s star is fading, Davis herself gives an unforgettable performance, acting funny, sometimes acidely so, but with sadness and insecurity beneath (which Eve exploits).

“All About Eve” is split between Connecticut and New York; Margo and Eve are Broadway performers, not Hollywood actors. However, key portions of the story unfold in New Haven. (The play that Eve maneuvers her way into premieres there.)

New York and Connecticut have an intertwined relationship; during the 20th century, when “All About Eve” was made, CT was home to bedroom communities and suburban havens for NYC white collar professionals. To this day, Connecticut natives feel split on whether they count more as New Englanders or honorary New Yorkers. “All About Eve” makes a case for the latter.

“Beetlejuice” exists in a world totally of director Tim Burton’s making, one that so charmed audiences they took the tour several times again and let him guide them to Gotham City in a pair of “Batman” movies. But for every scene set in the afterlife, there’s another unfolding in a little slice of the mortal world. 

While Burton’s films are famous for their Gothic and twisted expressionistic art design, the filmmaker often returns to the suburbs too. “Beetlejuice” does both by focusing on two ghosts who hire the eponymous apparition (Michael Keaton) to scare the new living residents, the Deetzes, out of their old house. It’s not exactly as disturbing as, say, “Blue Velvet,” but there’s a similar vibe of horror coming to idyllic small town America — or a suggestion the horror was always hiding underneath.

Surprise, surprise, “Beetlejuice” is set in Connecticut, specifically the fictional town of Winter River. Now, the movie was actually filmed up north in Vermont, but we’re very happy to claim it as ours. Many families like the Deetzes — New York City transplants seeking some peace and quiet in the countryside — do live in Connecticut. I was never a Goth like Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), but I can relate to being a listless kid trying to find purpose in boring suburbia. Connecticut ennui isn’t only for adults, you know.