The Amityville Haunting

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

The actual film was a parody of paranormal activity and the Amityville Horror, although it is the 'same' house it is now in the suburbs rather than countryside... but we need not mention the finer details. I loved both the original and Ryan Reynolds version of Amityville Horror so I thought that I would give it a chance regardless. It's not the same story or even a good sequel. It's shot like Paranormal Activity and seems to be an improv situation as no one really seems to know what to say. They try to add narrative with a child and a video camera who feels it necessary to annoy everyone in the film with the camcorder and me with his recap of each bad 'horror' segment. Where as in PA (which I did like) the characters seem scared... Not this kid, as he says things are 'really creepy'- Yes Tyler (or whatever generic name you have) it is actually if I was you I'd be like maybe we shouldn't be here rather than worry about your future career in documentaries.Although, he may get a job in one as he can't act.

This films acting I have got to say is pretty bad... really bad. I will watch films that give chance to new/young actors but I genuinely think they found these people on the street. I don't mean to offend but the emotions come across as if they were taken out of a labelled jar. The actors don't morph as a cast and the Dad's tone from the start makes me think that they casted him because he has the attitude of a serial killer with a slow mono-tone voice, and thats pretty much it.

I wanted to like this film due to my likings of any horror with a half decent storyline and OK effects. But even as low budget I cannot see any need for this film... No one is going to get a career from this.

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?

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.