Amityville, la malédiction

"Moviecritique USA" rates this a 10/10 eh? up there with LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, CITIZEN KANE, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, MIDNIGHT COWBOY and LORD OF THE RINGS? Let's pass on that one!

This rates below PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE! It should not be confused with ANY Amityville sequel, or even a professionally made film come to that. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was the con-job of the last millennium but even IT is classic filmmaking besides this dreck!

The ONLY reason to watch it is the last fifteen minutes. Never have I seen one person take so much laughable punishment....and keep going! Its a hoot!

It starts...nothing sensible happens, then it stops. End of story!

THE AMITYVILLE CURSE is a junk addition to the AMITYVILLE HORROR franchise. It's an entirely forgettable production that looks and feels like any old low budget haunted house flick as there's no real connection to the other films in this series. What we have is a very typical horror film in which a group of friends move into a dilapidated old house in order to renovate it but instead find themselves menaced and then possessed by a gang of spooks.

By all accounts this was an early straight-to-video film and that shows in its level of ineptitude. Absolutely nothing happens in this production that we haven't seen done better in other horror films and the various scare scenes are a joke. The direction is probably the worst thing about this, as he chooses to shoot most of his scenes in the dark so that the viewer is straining to see what's going on. The only familiar member of the cast for me was the lead, Kim Coates, who's gone on to appear in the likes of BLACK HAWK DOWN, but like the rest of the actors he gives an entirely undistinguished performance.

When I decided to binge watch the Amityville films I hadn't seen before I feared the worst. Partially because they've hardly impressed me and partially because the IMDb ratings for them were really poor.

Starring Kim Coates this one screams milking the franchise, it doesn't look or feel like an Amityville film in fact I think it's barely even acknowledged twice maybe three times throughout.

Random visions, a person possessed and a whole lot of nothing is what you can expect from these 90 minutes of sheer unadulterated boredom.

Terrible flawed storyline, lackluster performances and very little to draw your attention for a moment let alone maintain it.

The Good:

Nope

The Bad:

The psycho music, really!?

Unforgivably boring

Was that even the Amityville house?

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I learnt that this Amityville binge might have been a bad move

First of all, this wasn't meant to be an "Amityville" sequel, it just tried to draw its audience by using that word in the title, but otherwise has little to do with what has happened before it in the series. That would be OK if they had come up with a good flick anyway - but they didn't. Do you find it a good idea for a horror movie to give away its own surprises halfway through? If not, then avoid this one. (*1/2)

The first thing you'll notice about The Amityville Curse is that the house in which it is set isn't the iconic property that we've all come to know and fear from the earlier films. And if they can't be bothered to even get that right, what hope is there?

Sure enough, The Amityville Curse is a truly lame addition to the franchise, the terrible script attempting to combine the supernatural with psycho killer shenanigans, with characters that are hard to give a damn about.

A group of obnoxious adults buy the infamous Amityville house with the intention of renovating it and then selling it, doubling their investment. Ignoring most of what has occurred in the previous movies (there's mention of Sonny Montelli's murder spree from part II, but no sign of the house being built over a gateway to Hell), this film sees the friends discovering that the building has been used to store a confession booth in which a priest was murdered. Random spooky stuff happens, there's a large tarantula in the house (reason enough to leave the place pronto), and the priest's killer reveals himself at the end, engaging in a spot of clichéd stalk and slash.

3/10.