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
Park
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)