The Amityville Horror came out in 1979, sparking a franchise that would last decades. The original run of movies went through the 1980s and into the 1990s. There were three theatrical movies, one television movie, and a handful of direct-to-video releases. Following 1996’s Amityville Dollhouse, things went dormant. There were no new stories in the Amityville saga that came out for nine years. Things were quiet. The horror landscape had changed with teen slashers taking the spotlight. That wasn’t what The Amityville Horror was about.
The horror landscape changed again in the mid-2000s. After an abundance of teen slashers, people were ready for a change. However, the change they wanted was familiarity. Both the audience and the producers wanted that familiarity. They got it through remakes. There were slasher remakes, thriller remakes, remakes of Japanese horror. Among all these, The Amityville Horror got new life. The Amityville Horror got remade.
Every few years, the horror landscape changes. The remakes were one of many changes. Over the following years, horror would splinter into many different arms. There were the torture porn movies, the found footage movies, the Paranormal Activity kind of found footage movies, and the mockbusters. Most importantly, though, was the rise of easy access equipment. At this point, almost anybody can get a good camera. Cell phones come with them and almost everyone has a cell phone. It means that anyone can make a movie if they so choose. Add that to nobody having the rights to the name Amityville or the DeFeo story, and you get a lot of people making their own Amityville movies. I’ll be heading into one of those movies in this post, but first…
The Amityville Horror
When the franchise was rebooted in the mid-2000s, producers Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Brad Fuller decided to retell the story that kicked things off in the 1970s. It was time to revisit the Lutz family and the terror they experienced while living in Amityville. Things would be a little different, as more details had been added to the story in the nearly three decades since the release of the Jay Anson novel. Some of these elements and some original elements were added to give the movie a completely different feel from what came before.
Once again, there was the Lutz family. George (Ryan Reynolds) had recently married Kathy (Melissa George). They and their three children moved into 112 Ocean Avenue, a house that was selling for a low price because a mass murder had recently happened. As soon as they moved in, George’s personality changed. He turned darker. He became more threatening. All the while, strange things happened in the house. Chelsea Lutz (Chloë Grace Moretz) had an imaginary friend who pushed her into exceedingly dangerous situations. It was becoming too much. The family had to flee or else they would lose their lives.
The biggest difference was the origin of the haunting. The original gave the idea that there was a door to Hell in the basement. It was this door that allowed a demonic force to enter the Amityville house and influence the people living there. That wasn’t the case in the remake. Instead of a door to Hell in the basement, there was a hidden sanitarium. Or hidden torture dungeon. Something like that. The demonic force was the spirit of an evil man named Ketchum who had tortured people years earlier in this blocked off area. The bodies of the tortured who died were tossed in the lake. When Ketchum was about to be caught, he slashed his own throat to spray both his blood and spirit everywhere. It would allow him to live on in that house.
That’s a major deviation from the original movie. Was that the “more details?” According to the real George Lutz, he hadn’t been consulted on any of this, so it’s likely that any additional information was made up. Not that his original recounting of events wasn’t also fictional. Other changes were that the dog died in the remake, they knocked out George to escape on the boat (in the original he just kind of snapped out of it and ran out with them), and much less focus on the religious aspects. The house also looked a lot different. It was filmed in a completely different part of the country, meaning they filmed at a completely different house. They couldn’t use the same exteriors they used in the original three movies. It retained the quarter moon eye windows that it was famous for, though, so that’s something.
Ryan Reynolds was the movie’s biggest weakness. He was good in the beginning as the likeable new father figure for the family. It was the shift to darkness that didn’t quite work. The current Ryan Reynolds could pull off the terror that George Lutz was supposed to bring, but the Ryan Reynolds of 2004/2005 hadn’t had enough experience outside of comedy to nail the transition. Sure, part of that was the writing. It shifted the character much to quickly from affable to off-putting. Yet, I come back to Reynolds performance and think it just wasn’t nuanced enough in that middle area of the movie.
All that said, I still kind of enjoyed the 2005 version of The Amityville Horror. It wasn’t the best in the franchise, but it also wasn’t the worst. It had some things going for it, including the performances of the children. The three kids were all good throughout the movie, pushing the terror they were feeling onto the audience. The editing was very much a mid-2000s style. It worked for what the movie was, though. Plus, the scenes where the family was in danger on the roof and scampering across the roof were well done. That was a great thing that made the movie stand out.
With that, I’m going to move into the mockbuster realm for the next Amityville movie. The strange thing about the mockbuster was that it wasn’t even made at the same time as The Amityville Horror. It came six years later, instead cashing in on the Paranormal Activity craze. However, it shared many story elements with the Amityville movies, justifying the use of Amityville in the name and setting. Let’s get to it.
The Amityville Haunting
This was an interesting entry in the Amityville mythology. It was meant to take place in the same house where Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his family, and later where the Lutz family would experience their haunting. The thing was, they were at a completely different house. They showed an exterior at the beginning that looked like the famous Amityville house as a group of teenagers explored, sexed it up, and got killed. Then the main character family moved into the house and every exterior from that point on was of a different house entirely. There were only two floors and a crawlspace. Maybe it was a basement? Nobody ever explored it. The original Amityville house had two floors and a basement, plus the attic area where the windows were. It was a wholly different, clearly Los Angeles house being passed off as the Amityville house.
Okay, now that that’s out of my system, I’m going to get into the quality of The Amityville Haunting. There was no reason for it to be an Amityville movie beyond the name recognition. I’m not just saying that because the house was different. There were other major differences that changed the entire feel of the movie from all the other Amityville movies. First and foremost was the format in which it was presented. The Amityville Haunting was a found footage movie. The most prominent camera was a handheld that Tyler Benson (Devin Clark) used throughout the movie. He kept claiming that he was making a documentary, but never explained what it was about. Around the halfway point, Tyler’s dad, Douglas (Jason Williams), installed security cameras in the house. The entire movie was presented through the security cameras and the handheld.
The haunting was also different from what other Amityville movies had shown. That was a good thing in many cases. The time manipulation of Amityville: It’s About Time, the family connection of Amityville: A New Generation, and the dollhouse in Amityville Dollhouse all gave some new ways for the evil to torment the main characters. It was always torment, though. The evil had simply been evil. It possessed people to do things or manipulated them to do things. It was rarely ever the physical cause of death, merely the instigator. The Amityville Haunting had the evil directly attacking people and killing them. That was an entirely different take on the evil that kind of got away from what the Amityville movies were about.
The other major difference was within the family dynamic. Many of the Amityville movies were centered around broken families or blended families. George Lutz was a stepdad. Amityville 3-D had a divorced family. There were single fathers and single mothers. The Amityville Haunting was just a family. No step-family. No divorce. A mom, a dad, and their three biological children. Nobody in the family was possessed by the evil. Douglas grew paranoid as the days went on, but he never became abusive toward his family beyond the amount he already was. He thought someone was sneaking into or out of the house, so he installed security cameras. When they showed doors opening and closing on their own, he started looking into supernatural books. His family was worried about him, but he was obsessed with the supernatural and figuring out how to stop what was happening. This was different than the fathers in other Amityville movies who would turn evil and threaten their families. It was always the whole family versus the evil.
There’s not too much more to say about The Amityville Haunting. It was fine. If it weren’t attached to the Amityville name, it would be a completely passable horror movie. Maybe even one of the better horror movies from The Asylum. With the Amityville name attached to it, however, it felt like a quick cash grab that never really cared about being an Amityville movie. It just cared about making money. And, I guess, that’s probably what I’m getting into now. I’m going to be seeing a lot more of these quick cash grabs as I keep watching Amityville movies.
Going forward, the Amityville movies get into a lot of standalone stories where people took the Amityville name and did whatever they wanted with it. Sure, that was what happened in the original run of movies. They weren’t all about what happened in the house. There were lamps, clocks, mirrors, and dollhouses that allowed the haunting to happen elsewhere. There was even a movie that felt completely unrelated to the hauntings at 112 Ocean Avenue.
But the movies that followed The Amityville Haunting were on another level. There was no Hollywood backing. Well, there was some at some point. Many of the movies, however, were independently made. If someone had an idea for a horror movie, and they could somehow relate it to Amityville, they would. Nobody was going to stop them. The murders that many movies referenced were real. They happened. Filmmakers could reference them if they wanted to. Would they take liberties? Yeah. Would they expand upon the lore surrounding the murders? Of course. And nobody was going to get in the way of their Amityville movies.
Things are going to get a little wackier and a little more boring moving forward. The post-remake Amityville movies took a lot of swings with their story elements. Many of them came up short on the execution, though. You’ll see what I mean. Trust me. You’ll see.
You’ll also see these notes:
- Jimmy Bennet made his third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in The Amityville Horror. He was also in Movie 43 (week 243) and Snow Buddies (week 270).
- Rachel Nichols played the babysitter in The Amityville Horror. She previously appeared in Alex Cross (week 12) and Breach (week 494).
- Jon Kondelik is a regular for The Asylum. He has shown up in Rise of the Zombies (week 16), Nazis at the Center of the Earth (week 73), and The Amityville Haunting.
- Chloë Grace Moretz was in Movie 43 (week 243) and The Amityville Horror.
- Danny McCarthy has appeared in both The Amityville Horror and Fred Claus (week 265).
- Rich Komenich from EZ Money (week 305) was in The Amityville Horror.
- Solarbabies (week 416) featured Jimmy Star, who was also in The Amityville Horror.
- Jesse James played one of the kids in The Amityville Horror. He was in Jumper (week 452).
- Finishing off The Amityville Horror was Philip Baker Hall from Bending the Rules (week 478).
- Amy Van Horne returned from Transmorphers: Fall of Man (week 130) for The Amityville Haunting.
- The Amityville Haunting featured Mary LeGault from Chicks Dig Gay Guys (week 145).
- Courtney Rice was in The Amityville Haunting and The Human Centipede III (week 180).
- Finally, Luke Barnett appeared in The Amityville Haunting and Attila (week 321).
- Have you seen the remake of The Amityville Horror? Have you seen The Amityville Haunting? What did you think about them? Hit me up in the comments or on Twitter to let me know your thoughts.
- If there are any movies that you think would make good subjects for future Sunday “Bad” Movies, tell me all about them. Tag me on Twitter. Leave a comment. Suggest some movies for me.
- Make sure to visit Instagram for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
- I’m still working my way through these posts, so you know the next one will be more Amityville movies. Which ones, though? I’ll be checking out the next three on my list: The Amityville Asylum, The Amityville Theater, and Amityville Death House. I’ll also make mention of Amityville: Vanishing Point, a movie I wasn’t able to check out. Come back soon for that post.
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