The Amityville Haunting

so the movie starts with the words "what you are about to see is real" this is so not true, in fact, its another one of those Paranormal Activity "true story" plots where one person is shooting the video the whole time: it reeks of horror movie cliché. i don't really mind the whole 'shaky camera' trend in "real" horror movies these days, but what really gets to me is the fact that these people record the whole incident but don't bother to check what they have recorded until the very last moment. i mean whats up with that? aren't you even a little bit curious to see if there was any haunting recorded until you realize that people are dieing around you?

Yet another film made to look like "real" footage. The only way for these types of films to be truly successful is to actually believe the footage may be real. First, the "father" character is so poorly acted you cannot get past it. His behavior has no clear motivation. It is completely unclear whether the "house" is making him crazy or if he is actually crazy all by himself. Second, the film is about one of the most recognizable icons of haunted house stories in American lore. We never see a sweeping view of the house, to prove it is actually the Amityville House. The Amityville house has three stories, amazingly, the house in this movie only has two stories. Thirdly, just pass this movie up completely and watch something else.

Please note: I didn't realise THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING was produced by The Asylum before I purchased it, otherwise I might have had second thoughts. This turns out to be a found footage twist on the whole AMITYVILLE HORROR franchise, which inevitably rips off just about every found footage movie in existence.

The main "inspiration" behind this film is, clearly, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, although this movie makes that film look like a masterpiece in comparison. Everything about it is horrible: the acting, the style, the distinct lack of a story, in which the writer just throws everything into the mix in an attempt to make something stick (nothing does). So we get ghostly kids, intruders, doors opening on their own, murders. It's all ludicrous.

The film's main character is a kid, and about half the running time seems to consist of him pointing the camera at the floor while his parents argue; this doesn't make for a good use of screen time. Instead, I was bored witless by it. The only thing that kept me watching was the bad acting of the father, which was pretty amusing. There's quite a bit of incident in the last five minutes (none of which makes much sense) but it comes far too late in the game to make THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING an interesting film.

Actual found footage that documents the horrifying experience of a family that moved into the infamous Amityville haunted house.

Opening with words in "1974" blah, blah "Defoe murdered his family", blah,"Lutz" blah, "32 years later", blah blah "what you're about to see is real". Then an aeroplane blonde graces the screen under torch light. After quick bloody death, your taken to the POV of a budding mini Steven Spielberg as he films his family.

It's indicative of Paranormal Activity and the recent Grave Encounters found footage films. With security camera's installed it's all be done and at one point it becomes a found footage within a found footage film.

Both female leads are effective enough, it's not an awful film, the acting is at times naturalistic but the issue is that this style of horror has already been done and done better with more imagination. Every line is a cliché , opening doors, accidental deaths, the wife that doesn't want to live in the house, no one believes the children, spook- less dark images, moving objects and so on.

At the midway mark as the 'boyfriend' vanishes and the police turn up you can help roll your eyes as the acting and script take a turn for the worse. The son becomes annoying due to the unnecessary explanatory dialogue and the father goes laughable loopy as he goes head to head with the entity. There are a few moments in the closing scenes where director Geoff Meed slightly redeems the film but it's too little too late.

The problem with The Amityville Haunting is that it perpetrates to be real and pushes the fact right to the end but nothing feels credible. The sound design is pretty effective if somewhat miss-placed missing the mark at times.

Overall, less effective than the Paranormal Activity series, clearly not much has improved since The Blair Witch Project.

My Amityville binge has led me to this, a found footage movie set in a world where Amityville has been recognised, made into movies and books and yet another family moves into the infamous house anyway.

As with all found footage films very little happens and this is 80 minutes of sheer unadulterated boredom.

What makes it worse (If that's possible) is that it's not even the Amityville house despite being said multiple times that it is. Both inside and out that becomes blatantly apparent and really is seven shades of stupid.

So we have shaky cam, we have night vision cam and we have the obligatory handicam filmed by someone who absolutely positively has to record everything for some reason.

In true Amityville style people change, folks turn on each other and yet somehow this is the worst one yet.

The Good:

It ended, that bit was good

The Bad:

That had to be the least sexy sex scene since the zombie humping in Braindead (1992)

NOT the Amityville house

The "Warning" real footage thing is getting dumb

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

The fact that there are no opening credits, no closing credits and therefore everyone involved is uncredited screams volumes

Someone should really trademark Amityville so Joe Talentless can't keep adding it to his film