Review of The Amityville Horror (2005) by Kaylie S — 24 May 2010

A remake is always a tricky thing. Normally when Holywood remakes a foreign film and tries to make it culturally understandable and relatable, a few things get lost in the process - but the storyline often remains mostly the same.

As for american films that are remade to be more appealing to a younger audience, it always seems to be a fine balance - just how faithful an adaption should it be? To make a film that doesn't differ at all from the original seems pointless - however, if the storyline changes too much it will obviously be critiqued.

The remake of 1979 Amityville Horror is one of those films that changes too much. Why fix it if it ain't broke? Well this film seems to go by the premise - everything's broken, everything must be fixed.

Every little bit of suspense and subtle creepiness has been turned into jumpy scares and horrors. Instead of just presenting us with a little girl with a possibly real imaginary friends, we're given a ghost-girl with a hole in her head and a sickly dead complexion. In a film that really only uses a minimum of blood except from a few scenes, everything is suddenly drenched in the red sticky liquour.

What was already a slightly messily executed good premise has been altered into just yet another main stream 'gore and ghosts' horror flick, believing that startling people is the same as scaring them. The character development is far too brutal and clumsy - if it exists - and it just becomes stereotypical and entertaining - only because it's so dum to watch. Never will the viewer believe that it is based off a true story, whereas the old version seemed more authentic in that regard.

There were some things that were enjoyable however - the acting was good, even though the dialogue and the direction was probably to blame. You could really tell that they were trying to make it seem believable, but the script left them only little to work with. A lot of the film was quite beautifully shot, but nothing extraordinary, sadly - the same grey and blue filters slapped over all the 'scary' scenes. The role of the priest had been extremely down-played, which was a relief compared to the crude over-acting by Rod Steiger. The number of essential characters had been cut down, and mainly focused on the family - leaving us with a clearer number of people to relate to. Sadly none of the characters are really that relatable.

All in all, this film fails at what it's trying to do - to take the good essense of the story of Amityville Horror, and make it better than it was the first time around.