Amityville: O Terror

This film essentially begins with a man by the name of "Todd Jacobson" (Kaiwi Lyman) driving his wife "Jessica Jacobson" (Kim Nielsen) and their teenage daughter "Hailey Jacobson" (Nicole Tompkins) to the town of Amityville, New York where Todd's sister "Shea Jacobson" (Amanda Barton) has just bought a house where they all can live. Although the house is quite large, it becomes immediately apparent that Hailey and Shea have their differences and that it may not be big enough for the two of them to live together amicably. So much so that, after a rather loud argument between them, Hailey decides that she would rather attend her new high school a bit early just to get out of the house. Unfortunately, that isn't the only thing troubling Hailey as she soon encounters several people at her new high school who seemed to have developed an intense dislike for her--and that is just the beginning of her troubles. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this film definitely had possibilities but the general lack of character development, coupled with a rather weak ending, left me somewhat disappointed overall. That being said, while I don't consider this to be a terribly bad film necessarily, the faults just mentioned were too obvious to be ignored, and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

The only good thing I can say about this Amityville movie is the actress playing the mom is very hot. Everything else sucks. Story stinks, acting is terrible, direction is juvenile. Women in their late 20s and early 30s playing high school kids?? An entire town that is evil? Nothing about this movie bears any resemblance to the original story although supposedly this takes place in Amityville. Boring, boring, boring. How did this movie get made?? How can the cast consider themselves actors and actresses? Like I said the mom is very good looking but other than that I had zero interest in this. Seems entertainment industry makes films to feed their own egos because nothing about this is worth watching. Like much of today's films this one just plain stinks and insults the audience's intelligence.

I am a big fan of the previous Amityville movies, and I suppose this lame (straight to) DVD (?) production was targeting fans like me. This movie has some of the worst sfx I have ever seen. It is the kind of sfx quality a 16 year old produces on a PC for a you tube videos. Scenario ? Basic stuff, written by someone who obviously has no idea how teens talk nowadays, and had no intention of actually trying to write something even remotely interesting. I have seen many movies trying to cash in on popular franchises over the years, and this is one such movie. Do not even try watching it on DVD ...huge waste of time and money!

I read some of the reviews going into the movie. But I still decided to watch. Everyone has different tastes after all.......

Except for this little gem. I don't think anyone could sit thru this movie (if they managed to make it to the end) and say WOW that was great. Heck they wouldn't even say it wasn't that bad.

There are absolutely NO redeeming qualities in this movie. The acting. The special effects. The plot. The script. All were so bad that all you wish is to go back in time to the video store and when you are about to pick this movie the wall of DVDs crash down knocking you out for a few hours. Seriously you would enjoy that more.

If you are, like me, thinking surely these people jest. Go ahead. Watch it. Then come back here and write how you wish you would have listened.

man,this thing was awful.brutally awful.bad acting.bad writing.bad everything.it was not realistic.the characters were not believable in the slightest.this film uses the tag line "based on true events".that is such a cliché nowadays and means absolutely nothing.it is simply a marketing ploy to lure consumers in.there's really not a lot of positive things I can say for this piece of work.i just found the whole thing ridiculous and tedious.of course that's subjective.others may find this to be good movie.i did see a positive review on this site.the current rating of this movie on this site is 3.3/10.but for me,Amityville Terror is a 2/10