The Amityville Horror (2005) Movie Review:


George (Reynolds) and Kathy (George) Lutz think they have found their dream home but 412 Ocean Avenue in the picturesque Long Island town of Amityville has a dark and bloody history. One year earlier on November 14th, 1974 Ronald Defeo, the eldest son, killed his entire family as they sleep in their beds and he told the police that voices told him to do it. The Lutz family choose to take a chance with the house but as soon as they move in strange things start to happen.

Hollywood continues with its fascination of remaking already successful or cult movies but can ‘The Amityville Horror’ improve on the 1979 original?

Based on the book by John Anson and the experiences of Lutz family, this version of the tale has received the full Hollywood treatment. With a much bigger budget, the terrifying, alleged true story of what happened at 412 Ocean Avenue in 1974 can now be vividly brought to life. With all the special effects wizardry and digital technology, we can now see the horror witnessed by the Lutz family during their traumatic twenty-eight day stay in that house but is this better than the original cult horror movie? Yes it is.

While the original 1979 movie was well acted by James Brolin and Margot Kidder, this version of the movie opens the story up a lot more. Instead of concentrating on mainly George and Kathy, we now see the horror from the three kids’ perspective as well. Jesse James, Jimmy Bennet and Chloe Mortez have a lot more to do as Billy, Michael and Chelsea than the performers in the original ever did. Now we she more of Chelsea talking with Jody, the boys discovering what happened in the house and how George’s deterioration effected the children. The performances of these three young actors really bring the horror to bear, making the scares all the more frightening.

Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George also rise to the occasion as George and Kathy Lutz. Usually a more comedic actor, Ryan Reynolds gets to show more of his talents as the tormented George Lutz. Here we see the character slowly transform from a fun loving family man to a tortured maniac. Many sceptics might have thought this would be a struggle for an actor of Reynolds calibre but he proves that he could be a young actor worth taking notice of. Melissa George gets the chance to showcase what she can do as Kathy Lutz. As she witnesses her dream and family fall apart before her very eyes, Melissa George gets the chance to show the talents that made her so impressive in the third season of the hit TV show Alias.

If you know anything about what happened at 412 Ocean Avenue you will realise that this is a slightly more Hollywood version of ‘The Amityville Horror’. The writers have fleshed out the background history of the site where the house is built a lot more but you can’t help but think they have taken a lot of artistic licence by adding a bit more gore and a villain. The special effects are very good allowing the filmmakers to really go to town on the horror elements. This isn’t all about gore however, as most of the best scares are very quick via quick, flash cuts, optimizing the frights and making you jump out of your seat.

The 2005 version of ‘The Amityville Horror’ is one of those rare entities, a remake that is better than the original. With a much larger budget, the alleged true story can now be told to its true horrific capacity. Genuinely creepy and providing some excellent scary moments, this is a popcorn horror movie that will have you hiding eyes with fear. Just don’t watch it alone.



Jamie Kelwick

“The Amityville Horror” is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying money. It’s a remake of the 1979 ‘classic’ which was based
on Jay Anson’s book. That movie came out about the same time that the ‘true story’ was exposed as a hoax, but the remake still proudly boasts that it is
‘based on a true story.’

I am not particularly bothered about the story’s authenticity, however; I’ll leave that to the conspiracy theorists and ghost-hunters. What I am
bothered about is the movie’s complete lack of originality, interest, fear, atmosphere, talent, believable dialogue and story development. It looks
like it’s been put together from spare parts of other horror movies. It is directed by Andrew Douglas, but it could have been made by a computer.

Here are a few of the obligatory horror scenes the movie employs: 1. Axes being dragged along the ground. 2. TV and radio signals with subtle subliminal messages (e.g. ‘kill them’). 3. Shots of something moving past the camera quickly, as a SCREECH! Fills the soundtrack; why are ghosts always so conscious of where the camera is?
4. The old reliable Indian Burial Ground. 5. The little girl who makes friends with the ghost that no one else can see.

And so on and so forth. I can imagine a movie that uses these clichés and is still effective, but this movie has nothing but clichés; although they
are based on real people, the characters in the movie are provided with such dull dialogue that we never care about them whatsoever, which is perhaps why I found the film so lacking in scares.

But let me backtrack a bit. The film opens with the deaths of the family who used to live in a big creepy house with windows that look like glowing
eyes. Ronald DeFeo hears voices in his head and kills his family. The movie decides, funnily enough, not to include the fact that the real DeFeo
confessed that he made the ‘voices’ story up to help his case, and thus subtly justifies the fact that he cold-bloodedly killed six members of his
family. This sequence is filled with so many flashes and loud sound effects that I felt as if I were having a migraine.

One year later, the Lutz family moves in. They are shown in overhead helicopter shots as they drive along the winding roads, in what looks like a
tribute to “The Shining,” the difference being that the shots lasted more than one second in Kubrick’s movie. As ominous music plays, the stepfather,
George, looks up the stairs and seems somehow worried; maybe he can hear the music too. They learn of the murders, but are not too bothered. ‘Houses don’t kill people; people kill people,’ says George. Oh, the ignorant fool. The house is probably the best character in the movie; about four times, we get the same shot of the camera tilting up to show us the house (sometimes with some completely redundant time-lapse photography), with its creepy eye-windows.

‘Day One,’ appears across the screen, and it took a huge effort for me to resist adding ‘in the Big Brother House.’ The family settles in, and that
night, George and Kathy take part in a sex scene. It can’t be said that they have sex, because when real people have sex, they’re not so bothered about the way the light is hitting them. Anyway, George suddenly sees the girl from the DeFeo family behind his wife, hanging from the ceiling with a noose around her neck (screech!). He looks again, and she’s gone. Since she was shot, and not hanged, I’m not sure what she was doing with that noose, but never mind.

Soon the family finds itself in the middle of a loud, tedious horror movie. The father starts becoming a little disturbed, and carries the axe around a
little too much. His eyes become blood shot, for some reason. He has visions and dreams about torture and death. Windows open and shut
themselves. Fridge magnets get rearranged. George and Kathy return home one day to find their daughter, who has made friends with a ghost, on the roof (screech!). ‘I think something is wrong here,’ Kathy concludes. The audience giggles; here is a movie where every character is dumber than
anyone watching it.

Philip Baker Hall appears as a priest to exorcise the house. His attempt does not speak highly of the Catholic faith; the exorcism goes wrong, and he
does a runner, telling Kathy to get the hell out of there. Even Philip Baker Hall, a fine actor, cannot make the dialogue sound as if it means anything.

Also immensely irritating is the movie’s choppy editing style. This movie has been edited to death. The shots are all about two seconds long, at
most. The camera can’t sit still. Since “The Shining” is clearly one of its influences, the director and editor should have paid more attention to
Kubrick’s long, eerie shots. It’s the type of editing that is described as ‘slick,’ but I think it’s just a cover up for the lack of anything interesting on the screen. It’s quantity over quality.

The biggest sin the movie commits is in being boring, I think. Once I got into the movie, and realised I was stuck with the ‘slick’ editing and boring characters, I gave up caring. The movie has a scene of gory fun where a babysitter gets locked in a cupboard, but little else to recommend it. If
you like horror movies with lots of gore and nothing else, you might like it, but you’ll still probably find it tediously unoriginal. When you hear the dog barking, do you think he’ll come to a sticky end? When the family is being chased upstairs, as a storm rages outside, do you think they’ll end
up on the roof? Screech!



Adam Whyte

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