Amityville Exorcism (2017), Amityville: Evil Never Dies (2017), Against the Night (2017), and Amityville: The Awakening (2017)

Here I am, doing something that only I would do. Okay, maybe not only me. This is something that few people would do. Something I’m crazy enough to do. It’s because I like to torment myself through movies, and because I can use this as a way to get some more writing done. I make that excuse so I don’t have to fully commit to admitting I hate myself.

You already saw my intro post for this one when I started this franchise journey years ago. I’m going to be watching more Amityville movies. There’s still a long way to go with this series. Uncharted waters for me. This post will be pretty simple. There were four Amityville movies released in 2017. I’m going to watch all four of them. I’m going to write about all four of them. See? Simple. The only tough part will be watching them because, as far as I know, I’m not in for a whole lot of good. We’ll see, as I start with…

Amityville Exorcism

I guess I had seen this one before. Twice. Two times in a row, one day apart. I didn’t remember doing that at all, and I guess this watch of Amityville Exorcism really showed me why. It was a forgettable movie. It didn’t do much of anything to convince me otherwise on this third viewing that I didn’t know was going to be a third viewing when I went into it.

Amityville Exorcism was about another family experiencing some spooky, supernatural stuff thanks to whatever demonic presence was around the Amityville house. They weren’t in the Amityville house, but they were connected to it. Jeremy (James Carolus) and Amy (Marie DeLorenzo) were a father and daughter who recently had renovations done to their house. After the renovations, Amy started experiencing some strange things. She changed. Jeremy hired Father Benna (Jeff Kirkendall) to get Amy back to normal.

Now, I said that Amityville Exorcism was an entirely forgettable movie. I stand by that. It wasn’t good enough to be good. It wasn’t bad enough to be memorably bad. Maybe if you don’t watch as many bad movies as I do, this would stand out a little more. I watch more bad movies than most people, though, so it gets lost in the shuffle for me. It didn’t do anything at all to stand out, aside from the premise. And, even then, it was on par with some of the stuff that other Amityville movies came up with.

The one thing I will say Amityville Exorcism did well was to capture the spirit of the Amityville sequels up to this point. Specifically, it took a basic story cue from movies like Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes, Amityville: It’s About Time, and Amityville: A New Generation. The whole reason that Jeremy and Amy’s home was taken over by the demonic force was that the renovation used wood from the original house. The wood was possessed in the same way the lamp, the clock, and the mirror were possessed.

I would say I’m never going to check out this Amityville flick again, but I didn’t realize I had seen it before. It’s one of those never say never situations. We’ll see if I’ll watch this one again. As for now, I’m onto the next movie.

Amityville: Evil Never Dies

If I were to tell you that Amityville: Evil Never Dies was an improvement on the previous two Amityville movies, you might think I have more to say about it. That’s not the case. I do think it was a better movie. However, there was one fatal flaw that took it down a massive rung on the quality ladder.

Before I get to that, though, I should describe what Amityville: Evil Never Dies was. It was also known as Amityville Clownhouse. That was the name it used on Tubi. I’ll keep calling it Amityville: Evil Never Dies. It was a sequel to The Amityville Legacy, also known as Amityville Toybox. The evil toy monkey was back. This time, it was purchased from an antique toy shop by Ben (Ben Gothier) and Michelle (Michelle Muir-Lewis). Strange things started happening as soon as it came home. Michelle heard noises in the attic, while Ben began acting different. He was more aggressive, more violent. Things went downhill fast.

The first thing that caught me with Amityville: Evil Never Dies, beyond the fact that it was a sequel, was the name Mark Patton popping up in the credits. I recognized the name, but couldn’t pinpoint it. Then he popped up. Yeah, that was the guy from A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. He was the stunt casting for this Amityville movie. That was fun. He wasn’t in it much, yet he made a major impact with the limited screentime he had.

Now onto what completely derailed Amityville: Evil Never Dies. Even though it was decently shot, acted well enough to not be straight up terrible or boring, and had a half-decent Amityville story, there was one side of it that was maybe the worst I’ve seen in any movie thus far in the disconnected franchise. The audio mixing was atrocious. I mean, it was downright unlistenable. There was a twenty-minute chunk where I couldn’t understand a single word of dialogue being spoken, yet I could clearly hear the music and sound effects. They drowned out conversation to the point where I had to rewind that entire section of the movie, throw on the subtitles, and rewatch it. Somehow, that didn’t tank it enough to put it even in the bottom three of the Amityville movies for me. The positives outweighed the audio mix. But I’d be lying if I said the audio mix was anything short of the worst.

Ignoring the terrible audio, Amityville: Evil Never Dies wasn’t a bad movie at all. If the director was to go back and remix that audio, this could be one of the better post-remake entries in the franchise. That’s how highly I think of it. That audio really is a problem, though, and I can’t get over it. I’m stuck on it.

Maybe the next movie will help me stop thinking about it.

Against the Night

This might not seem like an Amityville movie when you look at it from the outside. It also wasn’t much of an Amityville movie from the inside, either. In fact, it wasn’t an Amityville movie at all. The only reason this got included in the Amityville movies I’ve been watching is because an alternate title for the movie was Amityville Prison. Outside that alternate title, there was no connection between this movie and anything Amityville.

Against the Night was about a group of friends who snuck into an abandoned prison because one of them wanted to film a ghost hunting show. They soon discovered that the prison wasn’t as abandoned as they originally suspected. Was it a prank on them, or was something more sinister going on?

The biggest fault of Against the Night was that it started at the end. This wasn’t a movie where the ending should have been the beginning. It wasn’t a situation where we, the audience, would wonder how the character got into her situation of being the final girl. It was a straight-forward haunted prison movie, with a slight twist at the end. The fact that Rachel (Hannah Kleeman) was the sole survivor at the beginning spoiled that they don’t make it out of the prison.

There was potential in the ghost hunting show portion of Against the Night. Even if they didn’t go full ghost hunter production in the same way as Grave Encounters or that Ghostfacers episode of Supernatural, just having the characters try to make a ghost show on a whim and end up in supernatural trouble was a fun premise. The problem was that it never did anything with that premise. The cameras weren’t used enough. The spooky stuff happening wasn’t shown well enough. The whole movie felt like pitched ideas that were never really followed through on.

The other major weakness of Against the Night was the character work. None of the characters were written well enough to be memorable. That might not be completely fair, because two of the characters did enough to set themselves apart: the drunk guy and the filmmaker guy. However, when the main cast was eight or ten people and only two of them were even mildly distinguishable, there wasn’t enough done in the writing process to make the characters feel fully formed.

Against the Night did have some half-decent acting, though, which isn’t always the case with Amityville movies. The ending was also impressionable enough. A couple of the things in the final ten minutes will stick with me for a while. This was a decent movie, possibly the best of the 2017 Amityville flicks. Probably not. There’s still one to go, and it’s…

Amityville: The Awakening

Now we get to the final film in my trek through the Amityville flicks from 2017. I’m only getting around to writing this part of the post right now, maybe about two months after watching it. So let’s see what comes of this. I’m sure as heck not rewatching this one before writing the post.

Belle (Bella Thorne), her mother Joan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), her sister Juliet (McKenna Grace), and her comatose brother James (Cameron Monaghan) moved into the Amityville house in the present day of 2017. Strange things began happening in the house almost immediately. Strange sounds, things moving around, and James coming out of his coma. When Belle grew suspicious, her new friends told her about the Amityville haunting and showed her the original 1979 film as proof. It was up to Belle to combat the completely real haunting that was happening in front of her.

I went into Amityville: The Awakening with high expectations. It wasn’t that I expected it to be a great movie. It’s part of the Amityville series. I wouldn’t call any of them great. I did, however, expect it to be fun. Maybe not as fun as Amityville: It’s About Time, but fun all the same. There were some meta elements at play with the movies existing within the world of this installment. This was the first theatrical release, albeit constantly delayed, in the franchise since the remake in 2005. There were reasons I expected more out of this sequel than I got.

The meta aspects were the most disappointing part of Amityville: The Awakening. They barely played into the movie. The friends brought the movies up, particularly the original, the prequel, and the remake. The teens watched the first movie until the power went out at 3:15. Yet the things they saw in the movie(s) didn’t play into the conflict of this specific movie in any way. It was wasted potential, which has been a recurring theme within the Amityville franchise.

Then there was the theatrical side of things. For whatever reason, I had it in my mind that the theatrical release meant that Amityville: The Awakening would be one of the stronger installments in the franchise. It was. That’s fair to say. But that’s only because the franchise, as a whole, is really bad. That didn’t necessarily make this a good movie. It just happened to have better production value. It had recognizable faces and looked well enough shot. However, it could have been much more. It wouldn’t hold up against other horror movies that came out theatrically in the 2010s.

As for the story, it was refreshing to see a movie that didn’t take the route of possessed item from the Amityille house. There was no evil monkey, no evil lamp, no evil mirror. There wasn’t even the evil lumber that showed up in another Amityville movie from 2017. This was a possessed item free movie. The threat was the house itself. Specifically, it was the red room in the basement. It was what was in that red room.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Amityville: The Awakening. It was alright, but my expectations were higher than it could achieve. When I say I was excited for the meta elements, I mean it. I thought it would be a fully self-referential movie where the other films would play a part in stopping the evil. They didn’t. They simply existed, which led to a bunch of wasted potential, and my waning interest. Oh well.

2017 was a roller coaster of a year for Amityville movies. Mark Polonia had another Amityville movie come out, which would kick off a series within the franchise. There was a sequel to The Amityville Legacy that continued the story of the possessed monkey toy. An unrelated movie was shoehorned into the Amityville franchise, and another movie took the franchise back to the theater. A couple of them were decent enough, while another had major sound issues that completely derailed what could have been a good instalment.

It'll probably be a couple years before I get to the next batch of Amityville movies. I’m not churning out these posts as quickly as I used to. I plan to get back to the Amityville movies at some point, though. I don’t think I’m even halfway through the output; they come out so rapidly. Seven Amityville movies came out in 2024. Luckily, we’re only at one this year. Seven is bonkers.

Amityville has had a major impact on the movie landscape. It’s not necessarily that the movies inspired a whole bunch of haunted house movies. The closest I could say things came to that was that the Warrens were involved in the real Amityville story, and they now have their own franchise in The Conjuring. The more lasting impact of these movies is that they’ve been easy access for independent filmmakers to let their creativity, or lack of, shine. Movies I haven’t covered yet include Amityville Vibrator, Witches of Amityville Academy, and Amityville Gas Chamber. Think about how different those all must be.

I don’t love the Amityville franchise, but it will always have a place in my heart. The first two were two of the earlier horror movies that I was interested in, particularly the second. When going through the first bunch of movies for my earlier posts, I instantly fell in love with Amityville: It’s About Time, and I regularly think about Amityville: A New Generation. I’m probably going to be thinking about Against the Night for a while. Some of these movies have been worth it. Some haven’t. They’ve all worked for Sunday “Bad” Movies. That’s what matters here.

Now let’s get to the notes for these four movies:

• Mark Polonia directed Amityville Exorcism. He was previously featured twice in Sunday “Bad” Movies with both Bigfoot vs. Zombies and Amityville Death House.
• The other returning director in this post was Dustin Ferguson. He directed both Amityville Toybox and Amityville: Evil Never Dies.
• Mckenna Grace made a third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Amityville: The Awakening. Her other two appearances were in Russell Madness and Independence Day: Resurgence.
• Four actors have appeared in all three Mark Polonia movies featured in Sunday “Bad” Movies so far. Todd Carpenter, Steve Diasparra, Jeff Kirkendall, and Ken Van Sant were each in Bigfoot vs. Zombies, Amityville Death House, and Amityville Exorcism.
• Kathryn Sue Young, Austin Dragovich, and Yolie Canales were each in Amityville Death House and Amityville Exorcism.
• Ten actors from Amityville Toybox appeared in Amityville: Evil Never Dies. They were Jennii Caroline, Colby Coash, Schuylar Craig, Julia Farrell, Jeanne Kern, Cheyenne King, Breana Mitchell, Eric Moyer, Mark Popejoy, and Emily Smith.
• John R. Walker was in Amityville Theater and Amityville: Evil Never Dies. Those weren’t even the same director!
• James Carolus was in Bigfoot vs. Zombies and Amityville Exorcism.
• If you watched Amityville: Evil Never Dies and recognized Dawna Lee Heising, it could be because she was in Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance.
• Amityville: The Awakening was a Hollywood movie and had Hollywood actors. One such actor was Jennifer Morrison, who was also in Surviving Christmas.
• Finally, we have Bella Thorne, the star of Amityville: The Awakening. She had a role in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.
• Have you seen any of the Amityville movies from 2017? What did you think of them? What are your favourite Amityville movies? You can leave your thoughts in the comments, or you can get a hold of me on Bluesky or on Threads.
• If there’s a movie you think would be a good fit for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know about it. Bluesky, Threads, the comments… Anywhere works.
• I’ve got three movies lined up for the next three posts. I’m not entirely sure when the posts will be up, but I’ve got ideas in mind. First, I’ll be taking a look at 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus. Then I’m going to dive into He’s All That. Finally, I’ve got Showdown. What will the topics of those posts be after I watch those movies? Keep an eye on this blog to find out. I’ll see you soon with another post.

Guns (1990) and Sequels That Lose What Made the Original Special

The idea of a sequel can be daunting to a creative team. How much of the sequel should be recycled ideas from the original film? There should be some sort of consistency. The audience connected to the original because of the story that was told and the spectacle of what they saw. There was a formula to the original that clicked. Some of that formula should be present if the creative team expects the audience to return for another outing.

During the process of making the sequel, a decision must be made about what direction to take the franchise. What made the original movie click must be taken into consideration. That magic feeling that only movies can create must be replicated. However, it isn’t always that easy. The creative team could pull the wrong thing. They could make a sequel that feels like they didn’t understand what made the other movie work. That’s where we get into the subject movie of this post.

Guns was a 1990 sequel within the Triple B movie series. If you’re reading this far into Sunday “Bad” Movies, you must already be familiar with the Triple B series. This isn’t my first rodeo with it. Malibu Express kicked it off. Hard Ticket to Hawaii took it to new heights. Picasso Trigger broadened the locations, and Savage Beach… Well, that one was a movie. Now I’ve gotten to the fifth film and my only real thought about it was that it lost what made the rest of the movies special.

Maybe I should get into the story a little bit. Donna (Dona Speir) and her new partner, Nicole (Roberta Vasquez), were hot on the trail of Juan Degas (Erik Estrada), a gun-runner who attempted to assassinate Nicole. They teamed up with Shane Abilene (Michael J. Shane), Edy (Cynthia Brimhall), Bruce (Bruce Penhall), and a few other secret agents to stop the weapons smuggling and Juan. It was as action-packed and sexy as any Triple B movie so far.

Yet, there was something Guns was missing. There was a reason I thought it didn’t understand what made the other movies in the Triple B series special. There was sex in the Triple B movies before this. That’s for sure. There was action. Andy Sidaris, the director, loved his babes, bombs, and bullets. The other movies also had a weird sense of humour that didn’t seem as apparent in this fifth film. Where was the humour?

Let’s go back to the beginning of the franchise to see where the humour was throughout it. One of the biggest running gags in the Triple B films was the inept gunslinging of the Abilene family. None of them could properly shoot a gun. I believe it was specifically moving targets that they couldn’t hit. Cody was bad during target practice in Malibu Express and had to be bailed out in the field by Beverly. In Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Rowdy could only hit moving targets with a rocket launcher. Travis Abilene, the member of the family from Picasso Trigger, couldn’t shoot anyone during the boat chase and had to have Pantera save his butt. Shane wasn’t a big enough part of Savage Beach to really have an impact. The Abilene family were a bunch of bumbling idiots when it came to firearms. I don’t remember that being the case in Guns.

There were also the wacky storylines that Andy Sidaris put into the first four Triple B movies. Malibu Express had Cody getting into street races with a hillbilly family. Every race was goofy. And then there was June Khnockers trying to hook up with Cody while he outran a helicopter. Hard Ticket to Hawaii had the cancer snake and the sports interviews. Picasso Trigger had Taryn shooting off a bunch of funny dialogue and bad guys who were bumbling and fumbling around. Then there was Savage Beach with the Japanese soldier. I’m not going to sit here and write that it was great comedy. I just appreciate that it lightened the mood.

Guns didn’t have that comedic side to it. Everything was serious or melodramatic. A franchise that had four movies that tried to be fun and funny dropped the funny. The action was still fun. The interactions between the characters no longer had that same energy, though. The comedy was taken out of the writing, with Guns not having a side story or side character to lighten the mood. The comedy was taken out of the performances, with Guns not having Hope Marie Carlton. Or even Harold Diamond, who last showed up in Picasso Trigger. Guns missed out on that one integral part of the earlier movies, feeling like it missed out on what made the rest of the Triple B movies feel special.

There have been other examples of sequels that didn’t understand why previous movies worked. Earlier this year, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera was released. It was a fine enough movie with a thrilling heist near the end. Yet, it completely changed the formula for the franchise. The first movie had been a cat-and-mouse style heist movie about a group of dirty cops going after a group of bank robbers. That cat-and-mouse story was what really drove Den of Thieves forward. Rather than continue the cat-and-mouse of it all, the sequel put the leader of the dirty cops with the survivor of the robbers to create a sort of super team. Sure, it worked and was entertaining. It also wasn’t what made the original work.

You could also look at Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle for a more Sunday “Bad” Movies centric example. When Birdemic: Shock and Terror came out, there was one thing that really stood out about it. The team behind it put effort into it. Sure, it was terrible. The effects were bad. The acting might have been worse. The attempt at a romantic storyline fell flatter than a Tom Brady football in the NFL playoffs (cue Family Guy cutaway gag). But there was effort put into it. They tried to make something decent. They just happened to fail. Some people felt like Birdemic 2: The Resurrection didn’t recapture the magic because they were trying to make a bad movie. That doesn’t matter to me. They tried. That was the important thing in the franchise. What the third movie failed to do was try. Just from a plain filmmaking standpoint. Doubles who looked nothing like the actors. Shots that varied in exposure from one to the next. The filmmaking was leagues worse than the already bad filmmaking because they stopped trying. That was where Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle lost sight of what made the other movies work. They made a no effort sequel and it showed.

Now, the one thing I want to mention about this idea of a sequel not understanding what came before is that it’s not necessarily the story being changed up. It’s more of a feeling. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift might seem like a movie that didn’t understand what made the franchise special. The two movies previous had been about a driver going undercover in a criminal organization on behalf of a police force. Tokyo Drift wasn’t that. But it still captured the essence of The Fast and the Furious in its own way. It took the idea that the original was a movie that people loved, rewritten into a car movie. The Fast and the Furious was essentially Point Break with cars. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was essentially The Karate Kid with cars. It also involved the underground racing scene and some criminal activity. As much as it might seem out of place on the surface, it actually fit within the franchise perfectly.

Franchises can be a difficult thing for filmmakers and studios to figure out. Sure, it might be easy to churn out another movie and call it the continuation of what came before. However, it might be difficult to figure out the right things to bring over into the sequel. This lack of awareness could lead to the audience feeling alienated. The sequel might feel like a hollow imitation of the previous movie they connected with. A replacement actor who tries to replicate an actor’s performance and can’t quite get it. A key structural piece that isn’t in the new story. A soundtrack that doesn’t play into the movie the way the original integrated the music. There are any number of things.

On the other hand, a sequel can’t be too much of the same or people will get bored of the repetition. There’s a fine line that must be ridden to have a successful sequel. Take the pieces that people enjoyed. Add new connective tissue. Blend it all together to create something that feels as good, but also fresh. Make it so that it feels familiar without feeling repetitive and without taking away what made the previous movie so successful. Yeah, that would be a struggle to even figure out, and I think that’s why we end up in situations like Guns, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, and Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle. There might still be good in them. Hell, you might end up with an overall good film, like the Den of Thieves sequel. But they’ll always feel like they’re missing something, because they are.

This post won’t be missing the notes, though. Here they are:

• I’m just going to link to Birdemic: Shock and Terror, Birdemic 2: The Resurrection, and Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle right here.
• Andy Sidaris directed Guns. He also directed Malibu Express, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Picasso Trigger, and Savage Beach.
• Rodrigo Obregón and Dona Speir have each been in Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Picasso Trigger, Savage Beach, and Guns.
• Rustam Branaman and Cynthia Brimhall were both in Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Picasso Trigger, and Guns.
• John Brown appeared in Malibu Express, Picasso Trigger, and Guns.
• Christian Drew Sidaris was in Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Savage Beach, and Guns.
• David Hadder and Bruce Penhall each had roles in Picasso Trigger, Savage Beach, and Guns.
• Picasso Trigger and Guns each featured Liv Lindeland and Roberta Vasquez.
• Rounding out Triple B actors, we have Eric Chen and Michael J. Shane, who appeared in Savage Beach and Guns.
• Now we get onto the actors who have been in Sunday “Bad” Movies in more movies than just Triple B movies. Danny Trejo was the most notable. Guns was his ninth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance. He was also in Death Race 2, Death Race: Inferno, Rise of the Zombies, Anaconda, 3-Headed Shark Attack, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, TheRidiculous 6, and Maniac Cop 2.
• Lisa London was in Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance, Road to Revenge, Savage Beach, and Guns.
• Kym Malin might have been in Picasso Trigger and Guns, but they were also in Road House.
• James Lew sandwiched an appearance in Martial Law between appearances in Savage Beach and Guns.
• Devin DeVasquez returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Guns after previously appearing in Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV.
• Chuck McCann had roles in both Hamburger: The Motion Picture and Guns.
• Guns brought Phyllis Davis back to Sunday “Bad” Movie. She had already shown up in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
• Finally, George Cheung was in Guns. He was also in Godzilla.
• Have you seen Guns? The movie, not the weapon. What did you think? Are there any sequels that you think didn’t understand what made the previous movie(s) special? Let me know in the comments, on Bluesky, or on Threads.
• If you have an idea for a movie that I should watch for a future Sunday “Bad” Movies post, let me know. I check the comments, and I listen to suggestions from Bluesky and Threads, too.
• Okie dokie. We’re at the part where I give updates on what’s coming up. The next post, which won’t be too far behind this one, will be about the four Amityville movies that came out in 2017. I’ve been planning that one for a while now. The two posts after that were unexpected. I wasn’t even considering them when I finished the previous post. I checked out a little movie called 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus. Then I saw He’s All That. Both seem like they fit for Sunday “Bad” Movies, so I’m going to write about each. That’s what you have to look forward to. I’ll see you soon with the Amityville post.