The Amityville Horror
One of my favourite sub-categories of the horror genre is the haunted house film. Poltergeist, with its character development, sense of humour, and emphasis on depicting a very real, very ordinary family caught up supernatural events, has only entrenched itself more firmly on my favourite horror film list every time I see it.
I’ve dabbled an interest in the paranormal. Although I don’t believe in aliens and dismiss many unexplained phenomena, I have a healthy respect for the occult. Unexplained presences, shadows moving just out of your range of vision, objects moved without explanation – although unnerving, I’m willing to believe in their being related to a lingering human spirit or something purely ethereal (demonic or angelic).
So when it comes to The Amityville Horror, the second film attempt at the supposedly true story of the Lutz family’s experiences in a possessed Long Island house, I have high expectations. My opinion of the film is also coloured by the fact that I was genuinely frightened by the book, The Amityville Horror, by journalist Jay Anson.
My biggest disappointment with this second film version of The Amityville Horror is that it draws more heavily on other horror films than it does on its terrifying source material. Instead of the Lutz daughter’s ‘imaginary friend’ being a red-eyed pig, it’s a dead little girl lifted straight out of The Sixth Sense. Instead of chronicling the complicated, fascinating history of the house, as the book does, the film presents a neat, contained tale about an evil reverend figure and tortured Native Americans, which viewers should recognise from the Poltergeist series. Similarly, the axe-wielding, possessed father is lifted straight from The Shining, and skirts the fact that the entire Lutz family was twisted by the house.
And, of course, the most obvious horror film influence is that supernatural occurrences are presented in flashes and often depicted in the same jerky, speeded up cinematography as in The Ring.
Ultimately it’s a pity because The Amityville Horror could have been genuinely unnerving if it had focused less on provoking screams with sensationalist scenes (which normally involve drastically altering the original story), and spent more time on building suspense with eerie subtleties like a crucifix that keeps inverting itself, pig tracks in the snow, inexplicable banging noises, and long-range demonic attacks on the family’s priest that all appear in the book.
So is The Amityville Horror a bad film? Actually no. If you can ignore its blatant borrowing from other films in the genre, and are ignorant of what the film could have been, you should be unnerved by it.
With events focused on the young Lutz family, the film’s cast is relatively small, but all performances are well handled. The children are likeable without being sickly sweet. Ryan Reynolds, known more for his comic performances in Blade III and Van Wilder plays it (mostly) straight here, and pulls off George Lutz’s schizophrenic struggles. Plus, he spends a good portion of the film topless, to show off his impressive physique. This man was designed for a superhero film.
The Amityville Horror is probably not the best horror film of the year. However, for a typically B-grade genre, its cast and the film makers, as a whole, take the project seriously, which is very refreshing. And after seeing it, you probably won’t want to move into an old house ‘with a rich history’ any time soon.
I’ve dabbled an interest in the paranormal. Although I don’t believe in aliens and dismiss many unexplained phenomena, I have a healthy respect for the occult. Unexplained presences, shadows moving just out of your range of vision, objects moved without explanation – although unnerving, I’m willing to believe in their being related to a lingering human spirit or something purely ethereal (demonic or angelic).
So when it comes to The Amityville Horror, the second film attempt at the supposedly true story of the Lutz family’s experiences in a possessed Long Island house, I have high expectations. My opinion of the film is also coloured by the fact that I was genuinely frightened by the book, The Amityville Horror, by journalist Jay Anson.
My biggest disappointment with this second film version of The Amityville Horror is that it draws more heavily on other horror films than it does on its terrifying source material. Instead of the Lutz daughter’s ‘imaginary friend’ being a red-eyed pig, it’s a dead little girl lifted straight out of The Sixth Sense. Instead of chronicling the complicated, fascinating history of the house, as the book does, the film presents a neat, contained tale about an evil reverend figure and tortured Native Americans, which viewers should recognise from the Poltergeist series. Similarly, the axe-wielding, possessed father is lifted straight from The Shining, and skirts the fact that the entire Lutz family was twisted by the house.
And, of course, the most obvious horror film influence is that supernatural occurrences are presented in flashes and often depicted in the same jerky, speeded up cinematography as in The Ring.
Ultimately it’s a pity because The Amityville Horror could have been genuinely unnerving if it had focused less on provoking screams with sensationalist scenes (which normally involve drastically altering the original story), and spent more time on building suspense with eerie subtleties like a crucifix that keeps inverting itself, pig tracks in the snow, inexplicable banging noises, and long-range demonic attacks on the family’s priest that all appear in the book.
So is The Amityville Horror a bad film? Actually no. If you can ignore its blatant borrowing from other films in the genre, and are ignorant of what the film could have been, you should be unnerved by it.
With events focused on the young Lutz family, the film’s cast is relatively small, but all performances are well handled. The children are likeable without being sickly sweet. Ryan Reynolds, known more for his comic performances in Blade III and Van Wilder plays it (mostly) straight here, and pulls off George Lutz’s schizophrenic struggles. Plus, he spends a good portion of the film topless, to show off his impressive physique. This man was designed for a superhero film.
The Amityville Horror is probably not the best horror film of the year. However, for a typically B-grade genre, its cast and the film makers, as a whole, take the project seriously, which is very refreshing. And after seeing it, you probably won’t want to move into an old house ‘with a rich history’ any time soon.
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