The Amityville Haunting

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

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.

I thought I would be soon over these stupid "Amityville" movies for Book Month, but there's always more of them! They just keep getting worse! This film once again starts by claiming it's based on a true story. For the umpteenth time, none of this was based on a true story and the author admitted to making the whole thing up! It was based on a novel, not a work of non-fiction! I hope James Randi cancels these films.

This doesn't even have much to do with the actual Amityville story. There's a few allusions here and there, like the flies. This movie is dreadfully boring. It's basically trying to cash in on the "Paranormal Activity" movies and behaves exactly like them! Well, I guess a lot of found footage films act like this. The point is that new people are moving into the Amityville house and their son records everything weird that happens.

There's a scene where a ghost just appears and does nothing for a full minute. I haven't seen every single "Amityville" so forgive me if I missed something. The ending is probably the worst as it features the dad going nuts and acting like an idiot. He's just beating up air in one scene. People are violently killed throughout the beginning of the film and the family still stays there! It's a pointless clichéd film and I'm glad to be done with these stupid movies. *

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.

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!