Review of The Amityville Haunting (2011) by Charles F — 22 Mar 2013

There is a sense in which a very meagre amount of effort - some of it perhaps genuine - has gone into the production of this movie. But, to be clear, this is the work of amateurs. In an ideal world it should never have reached an audience outside classroom walls.

It's even hard to tell to what degree its failure owes to sheer incompetence or blatant pilfering from other movies of the same genre. Honestly, there isn't an ounce of creativity or ingenuity anywhere.

I won't condescend to describe how cheap and poorly manufactured the horror is in this low-down dirty shame for a movie. I will, however, briefly mention the acting that is on the whole absolutely terrible.

But wait! no so fast, Batman! There is a fantastic scene here near the end of the movie, the husband and father of the house experiences a convulsive, major nervous breakdown that deserves a CRAP award for releasing such trash into the airwaves and on countless television screens all over the world (what is it really? what's the actual number of audience members for a movie this bad? Four, maybe five, screens?).

All of this transpires in various locations throughout the house but captured conveniently by the many video cameras installed in their home. Anyway, great freak out scene. Good for at least 75 breaths of air to one moon.

The best part is that the man of the house does his best to adhere to the most generic gender stereotypes, while the laziest examples are probably more linked to human instinct than cultivated action, but he also clearly doesn't know how to act.

At the point where the audience should be climaxing, we are treated to rapidly shifting images of the husband gyrating on the floor, throwing his arms and legs around, kicking and screaming like a regular goofball, and then we're back in business, except he's gone the next instant, barely able to stand on his own two feet.

Is this just a bad case of restless leg syndrome? A human being turned into a dreidel. Spun. Yeah, definitely. This guys spun. At the same time the movie is falling apart both literally and figuratively.

[Incidentally this reminds me of a trip I once took to the Sundance Film Festival which was taking place one evening high in the mountains on a makeshift stage, where we were due to attend a production of Guys and Dolls, and there was a major stormfront due to collide with the same area later that evening, only nobody really knew about it until it was too late to turn back.

I was nine or ten years old at the time. I coud have taken the play or let it be standing on its own merits, preferably the later, which helps explain why I would find the events that followed such sheer delight, as huge set pieces and designs went flying off the stage while the actors on stage did their best to ignore the fact that their reality was under destruction.

For one night and one night alone, it was like watching an plaster-cast construction of myself briskly dancing on the stage, light as a feather and thin as a leaf.] Well, I may as well have been in Utah at Sundance in place of watching The Amityville franchise in action in 2011 for this stupid and ridiculous Haunting every bit as flimsy and shoddy as the cardboard they used to decorate the stage that evening.

This crucial unravelling... in front of the family... immensely entertaining, I swear, and I highly recommend watching it. Obviously the creators weren't trying to be funny, but this movie is so friggin' hilarious, you'll find yourself rolling on the floor with laughter (or your money back, guaranteed!).