The Amityville Haunting

The Amityville Haunting was yet another movie filmed in the ultra- irritating 1st person style. The title has the word haunting in it, which to a lay-man like myself, lends itself to indicate there might be a chance you will be scared. I can only tell you there is no such scene. Sadly, this was an awful movie; there was so much script material, and different avenues that could have possibly been explored. Yet, the writers and Directors failed to follow any type of format that would resemble a professional movie; you might say, whatever does he means. Well, allow me to expand, this movie was filmed in such a way, that we are to assume that a child filmed it, really! Why, would anyone want to pay to see a film that has no plot, flow, professionalism, or natural progression, nothing! Yes, I am slightly perturbed, I actually was rooting for this whole family to be mutilated, and that's how annoying this movie was. I rooted and kept thinking to myself: I can't wait for this annoying kid with the camera to get it!

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.

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.

This movie was one of the worst waste of times I have ever had to sit through. Already from the very beginning, it was painstakingly obvious that this was going to be another delve into the likes of "Paranormal Activity" (which I didn't enjoy either).

But this movie? Come on! They take the Amityville name and then hype it up with one of these oh-so-great-and-oh-so-spooky documentaries, making it into a modern day version of the "Blairwitch Project". Yeah, great. Oh wait, except for it didn't working on any level.

The movie was an endless stream of really bad camera work, interrupted by this blackening-out screen and static sound whenever the entity was about to make something happen or make an appearance. What was up with that? I got thoroughly frustrated by the crappy camera work and the static sounds just added fuel to the fire called irritation with the movie.

"Amityville Haunting" is one of the most uneventful and frightfully boring movies I had ever had to sit through. Nothing even remotely scary happened throughout the entire movie, and I actually dozed off once or twice.

I am not a fan of movies of this caliber, and I didn't particularly enjoy any of the "Paranormal Activity" movies either, but checked them out because of the hype that was surrounding them. "Amityville Haunting", however, is just a cheap imitation of those movies, and then it is wrapped in a casing called "Amityville", a name that us horror fans will recognize from the early 80's.

"Amityville Haunting" was a sad excuse for a movie, and I wasn't the least bit entertained. If you are looking for a horror movie for the evening, or hoping to have at least a single scare, please, oh please, do pick another movie, because "Amityville Haunting" is just not worth it.

Watched 20 minutes of this utter waste of film space before I couldn't handle the DT's of camera work any further. OK, so since the first Amityville, there has been a keen interest in the paranormal & the story surrounding the so called Amityville Horror. I could have asked my 3 year old son to hold the cam steadier than the actors or so called actors in this so called movie. It is really that bad, not anywhere near the hopeless camera work of Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity, 100 times worse than that. If you're looking for a scare, go to Walmart & watch what some shoppers choose to wear when spending up big. Please, save your 30 seconds of your life in watching this trash. You will thank me later.