Witches of Amityville Academy

Horrible wooden acting on the level of a middle school play, cringe dialog, terrible special effects, a trite storyline, camera work is meh. There's nothing scary or compelling about this. Basically feels like someone paid a bunch of illiterate suburban sorority sisters $15/hr to dress up as witches and read dialog from a cardboard que sheet. I don't understand how a horrible film like this gets funding? Who read the story and dialog for this and was like "yeah, send it!"? Why was no one like "okay, now, repeat that line without sounding like a robot"? Definitely one of the worst movies I've seen in awhile -- and I love terrible b movies.

This film essentially begins several hundred years ago with three women named "Sam" (Kira Reed Lorsch), "Lucy" (Donna Spangler) and "Elena" (Brittan Taylor) being forcibly led through the woods at night and subsequently hanged for being witches. The film then fast-forwards to a couple of thugs breaking in to a suburban house in search of a safe supposedly loaded with money. What these two burglars find instead are three young women with magic powers who quickly render them unconscious. The next thing they know they are back in their car parked across that same house with no idea of what they are doing or how they got there. The film then shifts to a young woman named "Jessica" (Sarah T. Cohen) accepting an invitation to a private academy even though she never actually applied for admission. Upon entering, she is quickly led to the head mistress named "Dominque" (Amanda Jade-Tyler) who, after a few perfunctory questions, has a student show her to her room. Once there, she is introduced to her roommate "Sally" (Georgina Jane) who has also received an invitation to attend the academy even though she never applied either. What neither of them realize, however, is that the invitation was a ruse, and they are to be sacrificed that very night to a demon named "Botis" (Tobey Wynn-Davies). Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I honestly didn't expect too much from this movie due in large part to the low score on IMDb. Having now seen the film in its entirety, I now understand the low rating and negative reviews. Frankly speaking, this was not a good movie, and I suspect that the word "Amityville" was simply slapped on the title to draw more attention--as it had no similarity to any of the other Amityville movies that I have seen thus far. That being said, however, I do not consider this to be nearly as bad as some of the other films using the word "Amityville" in the title, and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

So calling it "Amityville Academy" wasn't enough to save this one. It was silly and the people in it were like cardboards. It isn't even horror, or fantasy. I don't even know what kind of film it is. An awful film with awful acting. It seems they've forgotten how to make decent films now.

Avoid this poor excuse for complete and utter rubbish. The real horror in this video is the acting, the dialog and the camera work. The acting is wooden and woeful. The complete range of facial expressions of the entire cast consists of catatonic stares occasionally interspersed with some kind of wry smile. The dialog is utterly lame. The camera work is atrocious. If you have the time to watch this garbage, you've got far too much time on your hands and ought to consider going outside to watch rocks grow instead. At least the time spent doing that will be more productive.

Well, this 2020 movie having the word "Amityville" in it already made some alarms go off. Usually movies that have that word in the title tend to be dubious at best. There haven't been any proper horror movies with that name in the title for quite some time.

So it was with some reluctance that I sat down to watch "Witches of Amityville Academy" from writer Tom Jolliffe and director Rebecca Matthews, and I wasn't really having much of any high hopes or expectations to the movie, to be frank.

But I will say that "Witches of Amityville Academy" was actually not as bad as it could have been. Sure, this is by no means in the league of being an extraordinary horror movie, by no account. But there are far worse additions out there to the horror genre, so it wasn't all bad.

The storyline was pretty straightforward, actually to the point where it felt like director Rebecca Matthews was just running the show on auto-pilot. There weren't really any grand ups and downs along the way as the movie progressed, which made for a rather bland and monotonous storytelling.

Sure, the movie had a "Gilmore Girls" feel to it, and that was mostly because of casted actress Kira Reed Lorsch. And there was also a tingling at the back of my mind going: "this is very reminiscent of The Asylum trying to cash in on the 2020 remake of "The Craft"..."

The acting in the movie was adequate. I mean, it was not stellar performances, and some of the dialogue was delivered with lukewarm gusto, but all in all the performances were sufficient to carry the movie.

What surprised me about "Witches of Amityville Academy" was the special effects. While it wasn't blockbuster Hollywood CGI, the effects were actually good enough and definitely served their purposes and brought the movie to life in a satisfactory enough manner.

"Witches of Amityville Academy" was actually adequately entertaining for what it turned out to be. My rating of the movie settles on a four out of ten stars.