Well, it's a quarter 'til one in the morning and I just heard some strange noise outside, so it seems as good a time as any to re-post a review of the recent remake of The Amityville Horror, originally published upon its theatrical release in 2005 by a now-defunct (and deservedly so) publication. To wit:

The curtains billow early and often in The Amityville Horror, a self-serious fright flick, full of all the familiar genre touchstones, that tries to play up a classy, non-fiction pedigree, but ironically comes off as more dunderheaded and wildly implausible than any number of slapdash, generic horror siblings. A nastily forceful and artless rehash of movies both much better (The Shining) and just as bad (Hide and Seek), The Amityville Horror is a remake of the 1979 film starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder, and based on a true story — “the true story” the title card trumpets (like it’s a friggin’ chronicling of the Revolutionary War or something). It jabs at the audience insistently from the get-go, mixing earsplitting sound design and ghoulish and gory visual smash-cuts picked up off the cutting room floors of various Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson music videos.

The film is set in 1975 in the Deer Park suburbs of Long Island. Contractor George Lutz (a buff, bearded Ryan Reynolds) has found love with Kathy (Melissa George), and with her comes a ready-made family consisting of three kids — surly pre-teen Billy, young daughter Chelsea and little, perpetually dewy-eyed Michael — since Kathy’s first husband has passed away. When they find an expansive fix-’er-upper on the edge of town for a song, they wonder what the catch is. Come to find out that in the house scruffy, bearded Ronald DeFeo shotgunned to death six family members — his parents and four siblings — in their sleep, supposedly under instruction from demons. Never ones to pass up a deal, however, the Lutz clan rolls the die (wink, wink) and moves in anyway. Bad idea… George’s grasp on reality becomes more and more tenuous (as evidenced by Reynolds’ bloodshot contacts), and he starts hearing messages to kill his family. Chelsea, meanwhile, falls under the dangerous sway of dead little Jodie DeFeo, for some reason not stopping to ask her about the bullet hole in her head.

The concept of horror on display in The Amityville Horror is a loose one, applied arbitrarily to whatever works in the moment, be it a vaguely anthropomorphized house, apparitions of rotting-faced dead girls or bloody, tortured visages and ripped open ribcages. Mostly, though, it merely means sound effects editors paid by the decibel. Scott Kosar’s script never manages to rise too far above preposterousness, be it in big scenes (separate scenes of confrontation for the children when Rachel Nichols’ pin-up stoner babysitter meets an unfortunate fate) or small (a ridiculous expository microfiche headline, “DeFeo kills family after 28 days,” meant to give parallel urgency to the current proceedings).

Meanwhile, director Andrew Douglas — yet another esteemed commercial veteran making his feature debut — doesn’t have the requisite dark, foreboding flair to match The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, another Kosar adaptation exec-produced by Michael Bay. The result is a movie with game efforts from Reynolds and George, and a few early effective passages, but one whose finale is so stupid as to completely erase any trace remembrances of tangible emotional consequences. The only lasting horror in The Amityville Horror is in what it takes from your wallet. (MGM/Dimension, R, 83 minutes)