So we’ve got another Amityville flick. Hooray. For those unfamiliar, the Amityville series started off in the late ’70s with The Amityville Horror, purportedly based on the true story of a house being tainted by dark forces that lead a man to kill his family, only to have a new family move in and have the whole process start over (but with different results). Thanks to recanting and contrary testimony, the story has since been mostly debunked, but it live on in the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren of The Conjuring fame (with about as much verisimilitude as that movie and its sequels/spinoffs). Following this, a series of sequels resulted, straying further from the source material as time went on. Eventually, it was settled that any film could bear the Amityville name, outside of the original studio, as it was the name of an actual town and therefore free from the nasty purview of copyright. The floodgates opened, allowing quite a few completely unrelated ghost and possession stories bearing the Amityville name. In the early years of the twenty-first century, The Amityville Horror was remade alongside just about every classic horror franchise progenitor and garnered about as much acclaim as the old sequels did (read: hardly any), leaving Amityville to simmer in the straight-to-video market.
Then came Blumhouse with the idea to bring the series back. Initially, in 2012, they wanted to make a found footage film surrounding the investigation of the Amityville incident. This idea was shelved, allegedly due to the realization that found footage horror flicks had reached a sort of saturation point, and the script was re-written into a standard piece. Filming began in 2014, with eyes on a release the following year, but things got delayed constantly until this year. And it shows.
This time around, yet another family moves into the Amityville house, the kids unaware of the building’s history. One of the kids is in a vegetative state. Soon after they’re settled, strange doings a-transpire, as one would suspect, including the apparent healing of the erstwhile ailing child. Insert the usual Amityville shenanigoats.
Did that sound bland and rushed? Well, it fits the film. This thing is as boring and generic as they come, just with the added obnoxiousness of recent horror tropes. There’s no atmosphere, but the filmmakers seem to think that vaguely aping the look of Insidious without actually putting in effort would just magically pay off. Nope. Lame jump scares abound, and precious few of the characters are likable enough to care whether they live or die.
Belle Thorne probably fares the worst, as she’s overly-sexualized throughout, an added ignominy when she’s already saddled with a pathetic script. Every shot has her objectified somehow, and when they can, they place her barely-legal ass right in the center of view. I probably shouldn’t be complaining, but it just gets to be a bit much after a while. Gotta cash in on those teenage eyes, I guess. Thomas Mann (the actor, not the late writer) was pretty much unbearable throughout as a pushy “nice guy” type who’s too old to play a high schooler (I laughed when he first appears, my mind jumping to that Steve Buscemi “Hello, fellow young people” meme immediately). Likely the only actor coming out unscathed is McKenna Grace, who shows some real potential at a rather young age (though the fact that she was visibly years older in Gifted earlier this year further highlights the film’s troubled release history). French writer/director Franck Khalfoun deserves the biggest slice of blame pie, though, as his lackluster script and by-the-numbers direction do the film no favors whatsoever.
Blumhouse should have recognized the albatross they had here, what with negative test screenings and whatnot. Hell, while it’s set to be in theatres in a couple weeks, it’s already available for free on Google Play! And it’ll be on DVD just two weeks after its US opening! Why bother? This is a piece of boring trash, par for the Amityville course at this point. Spare me.
Allusions of Grandeur 