In 1974 the family residing at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York is killed by the eldest son with a shotgun. A year later Kathleen "Kathy" Lutz (Melissa George), her children, and new husband George (Ryan Reynolds) purchase the property, but over time strange occurrences happen in the house that begin to wear on the Lutz family.
In the early years of the 2000s, the horror landscape had changed significantly with the genre drifting away from the teen centric horror films of the mid to late 90s (Scream, I Know What you Did Last Summer, etc.) and more towards heightened intensity and elaborate gore and torture scenes. Alongside the explosion in high intensity gore based horror coming from the likes of Eli Roth and New French Extremity came the era of resurrected horror franchises with 2003's remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While Critically unimpressive, the Michael Bay/Platinum Dunes produced remake went over like gangbusters at the box office making $100 million against its $9.5 million budget and lead to a wave of older horror franchises getting "modern updates". Thus came The Amityville Horror a remake of the 1979 film based on the Jay Anson book of the same name that spawned two theatrical sequels and continued in direct-to-video form until 1996 when the series went dormant with Amityville Dollhouse. Like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, critics didn't like this one either but the movie was still a solid success making $107 million against its $19 million budget. The first Amityville Horror film from 1979 wasn't' great and had some issues with bloat like the Father Delaney subplot that goes nowhere or some very dated effects, but it was held up by the performances of Margot Kidder and James Brolin. Unfortunately the Platinum Dunes produced remake may be shorter, but it's also louder and more obnoxious.
Right off the bat the movie makes the wrong impression. While at least they mention the DeFeo killings by name rather than pussyfooting around it, the sequence is filled with annoying flashing lights and flash cuts that make the film almost painful to look at. This whole sequence isn't scary and instead it calls attention to itself with its visual flourishes that only create noise. When we're introduced to Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George as George and Kathy Lutz, they have good chemistry together, but they're also terribly miscast. Both are fine actors, but they're both too young and clean cut for us to buy them as this financially strapped 70s blue collar upstate New York couple. Reynolds in particular is known for his snarky laid back delivery and it's still seeps through in the film and he just doesn't have the rugged edge Brolin brought to the role because when Brolin first played it he was 39 while Reynolds was 29. The movie is directed by music video director Andrew Douglas and the imagery and scare scenes are overly polished, clean, and lacking in subltey. While gore hounds will probably be able to appreciate the elaborate gore work on display that involves sleazy exploitative nonsense involving a crazed preacher torturing Native Americans for no real reason, the movie's not scary and it makes the mistake of showing the ghosts prominently and giving the evil of the Amityville house personification when it was the lack of a known antagonist that made the house scary in the first place.
The Amityville Horror is a standard bad mid 2000s horror remake. The actors try their best to bring what they can to this material, but they're unfortunately lost among the sheer excess brought to the production (including a revision on the babysitter scene that reeks of Bay's "vision" for women). Loud both visually and auditorily and lacking in scares or general insight into this long debunked supernatural event, Amityville Horror only serves as an embarrassing reminder of how easy we were to sell horror films to in the 2000s.
In the early years of the 2000s, the horror landscape had changed significantly with the genre drifting away from the teen centric horror films of the mid to late 90s (Scream, I Know What you Did Last Summer, etc.) and more towards heightened intensity and elaborate gore and torture scenes. Alongside the explosion in high intensity gore based horror coming from the likes of Eli Roth and New French Extremity came the era of resurrected horror franchises with 2003's remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While Critically unimpressive, the Michael Bay/Platinum Dunes produced remake went over like gangbusters at the box office making $100 million against its $9.5 million budget and lead to a wave of older horror franchises getting "modern updates". Thus came The Amityville Horror a remake of the 1979 film based on the Jay Anson book of the same name that spawned two theatrical sequels and continued in direct-to-video form until 1996 when the series went dormant with Amityville Dollhouse. Like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, critics didn't like this one either but the movie was still a solid success making $107 million against its $19 million budget. The first Amityville Horror film from 1979 wasn't' great and had some issues with bloat like the Father Delaney subplot that goes nowhere or some very dated effects, but it was held up by the performances of Margot Kidder and James Brolin. Unfortunately the Platinum Dunes produced remake may be shorter, but it's also louder and more obnoxious.
Right off the bat the movie makes the wrong impression. While at least they mention the DeFeo killings by name rather than pussyfooting around it, the sequence is filled with annoying flashing lights and flash cuts that make the film almost painful to look at. This whole sequence isn't scary and instead it calls attention to itself with its visual flourishes that only create noise. When we're introduced to Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George as George and Kathy Lutz, they have good chemistry together, but they're also terribly miscast. Both are fine actors, but they're both too young and clean cut for us to buy them as this financially strapped 70s blue collar upstate New York couple. Reynolds in particular is known for his snarky laid back delivery and it's still seeps through in the film and he just doesn't have the rugged edge Brolin brought to the role because when Brolin first played it he was 39 while Reynolds was 29. The movie is directed by music video director Andrew Douglas and the imagery and scare scenes are overly polished, clean, and lacking in subltey. While gore hounds will probably be able to appreciate the elaborate gore work on display that involves sleazy exploitative nonsense involving a crazed preacher torturing Native Americans for no real reason, the movie's not scary and it makes the mistake of showing the ghosts prominently and giving the evil of the Amityville house personification when it was the lack of a known antagonist that made the house scary in the first place.
The Amityville Horror is a standard bad mid 2000s horror remake. The actors try their best to bring what they can to this material, but they're unfortunately lost among the sheer excess brought to the production (including a revision on the babysitter scene that reeks of Bay's "vision" for women). Loud both visually and auditorily and lacking in scares or general insight into this long debunked supernatural event, Amityville Horror only serves as an embarrassing reminder of how easy we were to sell horror films to in the 2000s.