The Amityville Horror (2005) Movie Review

Don’t let the blaring "based on a true story" PR fool you – the newest incarnation of The Amityville Horror is more fake than the creepy realtor’s smile. This Amityville Horror out-fakes the first film and tries for the same results. The new one just ups the dosage.

The new Amityville Horror decided that it wasn’t enough to have a possibly possessed house that slowly unfolds into madness. No, modern audiences need a little bit more caffeine to make it through an hour and 40 minutes.

From frame one, Amityville goes for pure creepiness points. It opens with the graphic shooting that brought the Long Island mansion into the price range of a Deer Park contractor (George Lutz, played by Ryan Reynolds, playing James Brolin) and doesn’t pass go on the way directly to candyland. The realtor looks like Samara will kill her kid if she doesn’t make the spot move off the market, water stains are on the ceiling (since when did water become the new blood?), the paint job looks like it’s been bled too many times, and there’s even little things going bump in the day while the couple looks in the basement.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, The Amityville Horror is pure grade B Wisconsin cheese, and for the 17-24 demographic, it works like a charm.

The new film is all about the brief eye candy. It’s been perfected with enough graphic effects, excellent make-up, and enough metal fetish gear that would make Marilyn Manson have second thoughts. The frights are good enough to make teenyboppers bounce right off their seats and into the laps of their equally terrified dates.

If you’re someone who can’t stand the cheese in movies – someone who looks at an off angle shot and just blandly waits for the music to spike – you won't be able to stand Amityville. But if you’re in the rank and file of horror movie fan -- the type that loves to watch the cute hippie/stoner babysitter get turned into a frightened mess by a slaughtered six-year-old sociopath – then Amityville will work for you. Just don’t be that dumb guy who thinks it’s actually real.

Stop with the yelling!