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The Amityville Horror
(2005)
Dir. By Andrew Douglas
What the original did for permanently marring Dutch colonial real estate, the remake managed to do to my desire to attend movies in general. What the fuck is wrong with people? Every time I go to the cinema lately I swear to Christ it’s the last time, and this time I might mean it. People are so un-fucking believably rude. If you’re lucky enough not to sit anywhere near a group of conversationalists, and that’s saying something seeing as poor etiquette metastasizes like a pandemic, then you are behind or beside some dude who puts on a laser light show with the text message feature on his cell as he apparently relays the entire script to his peeps. On this particular outing the ho-bags double dating next to me kept narrating the scenes on a 15 second delay, then making sure everyone in the theatre knew what they would have done if put in that situation. If my boyfriend hadn’t sensed my hostility and in turn pinned me to the back of my seat I might have had to throw.
What I could glean from the film in spite of all the pukes doing their best to fuck with my sacred space was basically this: As terrifying as I remember the original being, the second was equivocally annoying. In retrospect, maybe the first one sucked too. I could have just been young. Slumber party hysteria combined with my mom forcing me to sleep in an unfinished basement for years really went to my head.
Apparently this script attempts to combine the highlights from the first 3 movies—minus, of course, the kitschy glory of the third installment from the 80’s—in what else but 3-D! It stars Melissa George, the blonde chick that got shot last season on Alias; who is nowhere near as hot without The Limey accent. The only saving grace for her costar Ryan Reynolds, as far as I’m concerned, was his resemblance to Jason Lee’s awe inspiring character in Almost Famous- if you squint just right, he’s Almost Jeff Bebe.
Amityville was littered with too many clichéd random nonsensical scare tactics pilfered from better fright films, whether they were intended as homage or an out and out copyright infringement is anybodies guess. How many movies are we going to have to sit through with the child talking to an imaginary friend that’s actually a dead kid but the rest of the family dismisses the relationship as some sort of a manifestation of creativity? Really? Then the little guy has to piss at night, alá Sixth Sense, but all of a sudden Gollum from Lord of the Rings with a bloody lip is standing beside the sink. Who invited Tolkien? And where is the unwritten rule that the dog has to die? Then, I mean we all know the story, but I certainly don’t remember a demon pilgrim in the O.G. Ever since that emaciated homesteader in Poltergeist 2, I just haven’t been able to deal with puritans, their attire, or thanksgiving without thinking “dead people.” But that’s a phobia only a negligible percentage of the population shares, so I’m not sure it’s a valuable use of screen time.
My final quibble: Who fucking moves into a house knowing a mass murder took place there, but doesn’t bother to research the specifics? And making your kids set up shop in room where other progeny were murdered in their sleep, now that’s some cold shit. But just so you know, the chatty bitch sitting beside me, wouldn’t have been caught dead in that house in the first place.
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