Amityville: il ritorno

I usually reserve the month of October for scary or horror movies to celebrate Halloween, and I thought this movie might serve as a nice attention-grabbing creepy thriller. Under than a few mildly moments that jump at you, this movie is basically an all-talk flick with no suspense, a weak plot, bad dialog, and horrible acting.

From IMDB's summary, five people spend the night in an abandoned house dubbed the Amityville house, but it has nothing to do with the infamous Amityville horror house or story. The people find themselves terrorized by ghosts (which hardly shows up in the film), venomous insects (which is just one single spider that crept up on a couple of people), and apparitions (which hardly shows up).

The Debbie character played by Dawna Wightman can't act to save her life. She over-exerts herself during distress or emotional scenes. The Marvin character played by David Stein tries to act professional or dramatic, but fails miserably. And, the Abigail character played by Cassandra Gava tries to be the sexy one, and tries to be the one with reason, but the acting just isn't up to par.

Go ahead and pass on this one for a Halloween scare.

Grade D---

My review was written in May 1990 after watching the movie on Vidmark video cassette.

"The Amityville Curse", the fifth film about the Long Island spook house, is a rather tame home video entry made in Canada.

Based on Hans Holzer's book rather than the Jay Anson novel, pic is set 12 years after the murder of a priest at David Stein's family and friends are arriving at the haunted house.

Poltergeist phenomena begin occurring with increasing frequency, driving worrywart Dawna Wrightman to distraction. At the climax, Kim Coates goes nuts and terrorizes Wrightman as if possessed. Ending is perfunctory.

Lacking good effects, pic is of little interest to genre fans. Its best chance is as a time-killer in a tv syndication package.

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.

This film essentially begins with a Catholic priest in Amityville, New York taking confession at a local church, when an unknown person in the booth suddenly shoots him to death for no apparent reason. The scene then shifts to 12 years later with a psychologist by the name of "Marvin" (David Stein) buying the house where the priest once lived with the intention of renovating it to resell afterward for a hefty profit. So, after buying the house, he convinces a married couple named "Bill" (Anthony Dean Rubes) and his wife "Abigal" (Cassandra Gava), along with another friend named "Frank" (Kim Coates) to help him and his wife "Debbie" (Dawna Wightman) fix it up. As it so happens, however, Debbie has often had psychic premonitions in the past and upon setting foot inside the house begins to get the feeling that there is something evil lurking within. Not long afterward, all sorts of terrible things begin to happen which disturbs all of Marvin's friends--and things rapidly get worse the longer they remain there. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that, although this movie certainly had potential, most of it was wasted due to bad acting and a couple of completely unlikeable characters--with Marvin probably being the worst. Throw in a rather long and cliched ending, and it's no wonder that the movie has so many negative reviews. That being said, other than the presence of Cassandra Gava, I didn't find much in this film that was even remotely interesting, and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

The Amityville Curse ... oh boy, where to begin.

A priest is shot to death while in his confessional booth by an unknown assailant. That booth is then stored in the basement of his house for some reason. Flash forward 12 years later, we meet two couples (Marvin & Debbie, Frank & Abigail) and a single friend of theirs named Bill who all buy that house formerly owned by the murdered priest. They plan on fixing it up and renting it out I think (the movie never goes into details on that).

Our Amityville 5 heroine Debbie is someone who experiences premonitions in her day to day life, so as soon as she enters the house her senses are triggered by the evil surrounding her. She quickly freaks out at literally everything that happens in the house. We get black cats, a creepy basement, and a ghost hanging from a tree outside the house. None of which connects to anything or makes any kind of sense. Eventually we see an unknown assailant (the same person who killed the priest) knock off a few more people. This leads to the discovery of who that killer is and the knowledge that they are in fact possessed by the curse of Amityville. It comes down to seeing if Debbie will survive the final act against the killer, a final act that manages to be somewhat intense and well done.

The fact is this is an Amityville sequel by name only. It carries the series name, but does not have anything to do with the DeFeo's or Lutz's or even that Baxtor family from the 3-D sequel. It suffers with a bit of an identity crisis as well. It wants to be a haunted house Amityville sequel, but also plays the murder mystery of who killed the priest twelve years ago (by the way, it is extremely obvious who the killer is about 15 minutes in). The movie never takes a direction with a specific plot and sticks to it.

The acting was a particularly weak point. Most are relatively unknown Canadian actors who are clearly out of their element. Even Kim Coates (who I expect a bit more from) looked bored during 90% of his scenes. The characters also aren't fun or interesting at all, which made me feel absolutely nothing when most of them met their demise.

The Amityville Curse is a cheaply made horror movie about ghosts and a murder mystery, nothing to do with Amityville at all other than it is set on Long Island. The final 15 minutes is actually creepy and done well, but to get through over an hour of absolutely no scares and really bad dialogue and no story direction is NOT worth it.

Luckily, the series gets much better after this.

2/10