Amityville: The Awakening

There's just not a lot here to review, honestly. Stuff happens, some of it is creepy, then it's over. The only really good thing I can say about it is Cameron Monaghan delivers quite an unsettling performance, despite the fact his character is immobile for most of the movie.

This film has had a long, strange road behind it. Starting with a Daniel Farrands (Halloween 6) and Casey La Scala (Grind) found footage style script in play, over time it was scrapped. Leading to this film. Written and directed by Franck Khalfoun (P2, Maniac).

Straight away, Khalfoun has a solid list of directed films under his belt. Being said, ones written prominently by other writers turned out a much better product. With this film, cliché and limitations are at play. Early on, this film sought a theatrical release and I can see what changed it all. It is lacking a cinematic punch. Lighting and atmosphere gave way to what was ultimately a tightly wound production schedule. Followed by even more delays. Even so, the film the film is directed well. Some effective scares and setups set a decent tone at times. Again, those missing atmospheric ingredients keep us in the dark with knowing who is at the helm.

I did find this film an interesting blend of the catatonic, ESP driven thriller Patrick with Amityvilles sense of possession an interesting take on the property. It provides a decent backstory and drama to the plot to keep the terrors grounded in reality. Solid writing there.

The rating is a problem here too. Originally an R, it was recut to suit a PG-13. Why? The Ryan Reynolds remake was a hard R and found solid success. This merely added less scares and a plethora of cutaways. Missed opportunities and a waste of filmmakers time and money that could've gone elsewhere.

The actors are actually quite solid, ranging from new stars and seasoned ones. They manage to convey conviction to each of their roles, even when moments seem over done.

The issue here is that this film is an okay film mostly because of its delay, but also because of its redundancy. How many Amityville films do we have at this point? Including redbox DTV's, it's off the charts. Hence why Farrands and La Scalas earlier premise may have been a better pay off.

Instead of replaying the Amityville saga again and again, maybe a modern deconstruction of the age old tale is just what that old haunted house needs to set those demon eyed Windows ablaze again.

This is my first movie of this entire series. I don't know, there is any connection with other movies or not but I really get the whole story without watching the previous ones. All I can say, it's a decent movie which can be enjoyed with your whole family. If I talked about story, all horror movies stories are same xD. All horror movies either start with moving into a haunted house which they didn't know :) but eventually get to know or someone has possessed someone.

Personally, I kind of love this. It was average type of movie. It has what I usually look for ''Jump scares''.

After countless years in pre and post production, this movie finally arrived to us in late 2017. I'll admit I kind of forgot about it, and just watched it last night (December 19, 2017). The movie just wasn't interesting to anybody anymore because of the constant release changes. In fact, the movie was only released in ten United States theaters and made about $700. But, enough about the movie statistics. Let's talk about the movie itself.

Amityville: The Awakening stars Bella Thorne, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Cameron Monaghan, and Mckenna Grace. These characters move into the haunted Amityville house located in Amityville, New York. This is the same house that Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his entire family 40 years ago. However, the mother is keeping this a secret from her children. Bella (Bella Thorne) finds this out the hard way when kids at her new school bring it to her attention. The freaky and supernatural begins with James (Cameron Monaghan), who is in a coma, is suddenly awake and able to communicate. Well, this must be supernatural. Turns out it is. James is possessed by a demon. And he wants to murder his entire family in the same vein as Ronald DeFeo Jr. Oh, and it's up to Belle to save herself and her sister, Juliet (Mckenna Grace), because their mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is pretty much a supernatural worshiper because she moved to the house with the intention of the supernatural possessing Jason to make him better.

Sounds like a good movie? Yeah, on paper, it sounds like the generic fun summer horror flick. However, it is quite dull in areas, and the scares are pretty low, which is unfortunate, considering this is technically an Amityville movie. However, suspense was actually quite high, and acting was somewhat good. The few times I did jump were during cheesy jump scares like when it's just the girl behind her sister. Overall, I am going to have to give film a 5/10. I watched it and was entertained enough to watch the whole thing (it is only 87 minutes, though). I would only recommend this to some horror fans. Not everybody will be as generous with their rating.

Amityville the Awakening is finally here after many, many push-backs and delays. Was it worth the wait? Well like many films that use the Amityville name, not really.

The cinematography is fine, the actors are okay. One of the biggest issues with the film itself is the audio, there are plenty of scenes where dialog is drowned out by background sound.

The film starts off on a good step, using what looks like old police footage to explain about the Defeo murders, unfortunately from there the movie makes a steady decline into worthlessness.

Instead of making the movie about the house, murders and haunting, they choose to focus on a bratty girl and her vegetable of a brother. The haunting takes a back seat to the family drama, which makes the movie even worse. Poor pacing, poor writing, the movie is less than thrilling.

Let's put it this way, there's a reason why they opted for a limited theatrical release and putting it up for free on Google play in October through December. It's a film even the producers and directors can't stand behind.

The reality is, the original Amityville was popular because it was portrayed as a true story, so the family drama was more humanized. With these other films, it's about the horror and this film completely ignores that.