I’m probably not quite qualified to review this movie, as I’ve never actually been able to sit through the original. I have, however, read the book many times — but that was back in the prehistoric era of ‘third or fourth grade’. I no longer have the book, which is sad. My grandmother gave it to me. She was cool. ‘Was,’ because she’s been dead for a few years.
Anyway, I’ve forgotten a few elements of the book, but I guess that doesn’t matter. It was pretty much fiction anyway, so the story is just about as open for rewrites for the screen as any other fiction book out there. Even Lord of the Rings got a few rewrites [not that I’d ever know, because I had the same problem with LotR the book as I did with Amityville Horror the original movie].
As I think I mentioned earlier [and more than once], the original was so unscary and so ungodly fucking boring that it couldn’t be tolerated [and I’ve sat through some horrid fucking movies]. I think Stephen King mentioned something like that [but totally different] in Danse Macabre. Something about how it wasn’t scary on one level, but on an entirely different adult level there were adult scary-things. Financial monsters from grownup nightmares.
This one…wasn’t so boring. It also wasn’t all that scary.
Why?
Because someone, somewhere, found out that the vast majority of people are ‘startled’ by loud noises, and horror movie makers seem awfully desperate to use that because…I don’t know, maybe they’re afraid that the REALLY LOUD NOTE is the only scare they’re gonna get.
There’s nothing quite like the use of the jump-music to totally ruin a scene for me, and, I’m sure, for everyone else. They probably don’t notice though, because they blinked. Me, I’m prepared about twenty seconds out and ready for it, but it still causes some pain. Sometimes I blink, and that means I missed the scary.
Missing ‘the scary’ is almost upsetting here. It’s easy to do because it happens so quickly. Most of it looks like [decent] CG work, very much keeping with the current theme that I started noticing right around the time The Ring came out. Fucked up faces, spooky ghost girls, I’m missing something here. I’m missing a couple of other movie comparisons.
Anyway, the plot is pretty much the same. DeFeo family gets killed by the son, Lutz family moves in, 28 days later…no, some guy doesn’t wake up in a hospital to find a world overrun by nada-zombies, they just run away from the house because it’s trying to kill them, too.
That said, I’m not sure it’s worth paying for. Why? Because of the obnoxious ‘Piracy, Rated I — Inappropriate for all ages” crap they crammed at the very beginning of the DVD [much like they used to cram shit at the beginning of VHS tapes]. So, don’t. Or do. Here’s a couple of links if you suddenly get the urge: The Amityville Horror (Widescreen Special Edition), and The Amityville Horror Collection (The Amityville Horror/Amityville II: The Possession/Amityville 3-D/Bonus Disc – Amityville Confidential). Or there’s overstock.com, who charge less for shipping, usually charge less for DVDs, and often ship faster than amazon.
It’s time to play more DVD-catchup now.