"The Amityville Curse" is a less-than-spectacular entry in the series.
**SPOILERS**
Years after a brutal murder, Marvin, (David Stein) his wife Abigail, (Cassandra Gava) and Bill, (Anthony Dean Rubes) help friends Frank, (Kim Coates) and his wife Debbie, (Dawna Wightman) move into a new house in Amityville, New York. Waiting with them until the furniture arrives, they decide to spend the night as a house-warming gesture, and immediately start to experience strange events around the house. As the night wears on, she becomes even more convinced that something is going on in the house but no one is willing to take her seriously. As the events in the house soon reach more extreme behavior, they eventually learn that one of the previous inhabitants of the house had gone mad listening to voices that emanated from the house, and had turned him into a murderer believed to have been deceased. Realizing that something is amiss, they try to find out the truth about the house before more incidents drive them crazy.
The Good News: This here is a really hard film to get into, even for the series fans as there's so little right with it. One of the only things is that the stalking or haunting scenes in the beginning do get pretty good at times. The several bathtub scenes are pretty good, mainly for the nudity, but also due to the fact that there's some really nice spook scenes that come from them. There's some fun to be had with these, and it's some really great fun with these scenes coming in at the right moments. There's also some really nice stuff to come along from the ending chase, which is really nice, has a couple creepy scenes and the film's main gore stuff. Included in the chase is a couple of bloody stabbings, a circular saw blade to the knee and a pretty nifty manner of disposal. It's pretty nice, and remains one of the bright things about the film. The other thing is that the added plot points in here make it feel more than just a usual film entry that copies the formula of the past ad nausea. These here are the only good things about the film that work.
The Bad News: This here was a really disappointing entry that has a couple substantial flaws in it. The biggest one is easily the lack of the action in here. This one features only a select few scenes of any real action or excitement, and that means there's long segments of the film with nothing at all that happens and it feels really dull. That's the other major factor to come from this, is that it really feels dull, listless and poorly paced out. There's no need for it to be as lifeless as it is, with only a couple times with anything that will generate excitement. Otherwise, this one here is just punctuated with endless scene after endless scene of the group discussing what's gong on or what they think should be the next course of action. It generates no action, no suspense, nothing at all of interest and is just a method to eat up time that should've been better spent doing anything else, since this one fails at that. It's also hard to take the film as a haunted house film, since there's very little here that can actually be attributed to a haunted house. In fact, this one abandons that in favor of a murder mystery that is so easy to solve it can be done in five minutes and in using that as the crux for the later scenes, it just gets even more dreary, dull and boring. With that manner, it really makes for even worse viewing when there's just nothing in here that has nothing of interest in the way it pans out. These here are the really crippling flaws in the film, and are the ones that are most responsible for it's downfall.
The Final Verdict: Without a whole lot going for it but a few rather decent moments, this one is really hard to make it for fans of the series. They should really be the only ones giving this one a shot, as it feels like an entry, while those who haven't been into the series at this point should ignore this one completely.
Rated R: Violence, Language and Nudity
**SPOILERS**
Years after a brutal murder, Marvin, (David Stein) his wife Abigail, (Cassandra Gava) and Bill, (Anthony Dean Rubes) help friends Frank, (Kim Coates) and his wife Debbie, (Dawna Wightman) move into a new house in Amityville, New York. Waiting with them until the furniture arrives, they decide to spend the night as a house-warming gesture, and immediately start to experience strange events around the house. As the night wears on, she becomes even more convinced that something is going on in the house but no one is willing to take her seriously. As the events in the house soon reach more extreme behavior, they eventually learn that one of the previous inhabitants of the house had gone mad listening to voices that emanated from the house, and had turned him into a murderer believed to have been deceased. Realizing that something is amiss, they try to find out the truth about the house before more incidents drive them crazy.
The Good News: This here is a really hard film to get into, even for the series fans as there's so little right with it. One of the only things is that the stalking or haunting scenes in the beginning do get pretty good at times. The several bathtub scenes are pretty good, mainly for the nudity, but also due to the fact that there's some really nice spook scenes that come from them. There's some fun to be had with these, and it's some really great fun with these scenes coming in at the right moments. There's also some really nice stuff to come along from the ending chase, which is really nice, has a couple creepy scenes and the film's main gore stuff. Included in the chase is a couple of bloody stabbings, a circular saw blade to the knee and a pretty nifty manner of disposal. It's pretty nice, and remains one of the bright things about the film. The other thing is that the added plot points in here make it feel more than just a usual film entry that copies the formula of the past ad nausea. These here are the only good things about the film that work.
The Bad News: This here was a really disappointing entry that has a couple substantial flaws in it. The biggest one is easily the lack of the action in here. This one features only a select few scenes of any real action or excitement, and that means there's long segments of the film with nothing at all that happens and it feels really dull. That's the other major factor to come from this, is that it really feels dull, listless and poorly paced out. There's no need for it to be as lifeless as it is, with only a couple times with anything that will generate excitement. Otherwise, this one here is just punctuated with endless scene after endless scene of the group discussing what's gong on or what they think should be the next course of action. It generates no action, no suspense, nothing at all of interest and is just a method to eat up time that should've been better spent doing anything else, since this one fails at that. It's also hard to take the film as a haunted house film, since there's very little here that can actually be attributed to a haunted house. In fact, this one abandons that in favor of a murder mystery that is so easy to solve it can be done in five minutes and in using that as the crux for the later scenes, it just gets even more dreary, dull and boring. With that manner, it really makes for even worse viewing when there's just nothing in here that has nothing of interest in the way it pans out. These here are the really crippling flaws in the film, and are the ones that are most responsible for it's downfall.
The Final Verdict: Without a whole lot going for it but a few rather decent moments, this one is really hard to make it for fans of the series. They should really be the only ones giving this one a shot, as it feels like an entry, while those who haven't been into the series at this point should ignore this one completely.
Rated R: Violence, Language and Nudity