Amityville Exorcism

Amityville Exorcism (2017)

* (out of 4)

A man brutally murders three members of his family with a hammer. Flash-forward to Amy (Marie DeLorenzo) and her alcoholic father moving into a home in Amityville. Pretty soon Amy begins to witness some strange things and Father Benna begins to think there's a connection to the murders.

AMITYVILLE EXORCISM is yet another cheap rip-off that uses the "Amityville" name to try and cash in on the popular book and film series. It's amazing how many of these movies are out there as they've pretty much became a sub-genre all on their own. This one here, as the title clearly gives away, is an attempt to add demonic possession to the story-line.

In fact, there's very little here that connects this to the actual Amityville house. The plot here has the current owner's living in a separate house but the maniac with the hammer took lumber out of the Amityville house and put into theirs. Just about the only good thing I can say about this is that it at least looks like a professional movie as the director at least managed to make a film without countless errors. It looks like an actual film, which is something a lot of recent low-budget horror films can't say.

As far as the rest goes, there's really not too much here to recommend for a number of reasons. The story is just downright weak. There's one memorable gore scene but that's about it. The performances are mostly bad and I also had a hard time believing that the lead actress was a teen living with her father. She looked way too old for this and you could say that this happens in most horror movies. That's true but here it was almost laughable at them trying to pass her off as a teen.

AMITYVILLE EXORCISM is a pretty lousy movie that's sadly not bad enough to where you could get some cheap laughs out of it. The movie is pretty bland from start to finish and it's pretty bad even for this series.

There were definite budget constraints! In all aspects of the 'movie'. No acting budget. No writing budget. No technical budget. I think the front cover would have been the most expensive part of the whole production.

I watched it, as something on the side while I was working, and it quickly became a distraction, akin to the shrill of an alarm clock.

The premise is simple enough, much like previous Amityville tie-ins, official or otherwise. You remember the one with the haunted lamp, that's this, but imagine they couldn't afford a lamp, so they just made a piece of haunted wood... i'm not kidding! They should have renamed it 'Amityville: 2x4'. It quickly morphs into an elderly film students attempt at a tragic family, trapped in a poorly written Exorcist for Bible camp children.

The board game 'Atmosfear' had better special FX, they should of asked someones kids to do it, it would have looked better! I wouldn't waste your time on it really! Everything here has been done before and quite a bit better too.

I'm not going to waste your time with a wordy, well thought-out review. This movie was so bad, that it was funny. If that was their intention, then kudos. I laughed at this film more than I laugh at some of the "comedy" movies these days. From the "demon" with the cheap red Halloween costume, to the liquor bottles filled with water, this movie was hilarious.

This film essentially begins late one night with a man by the name of "Charles Humes" (Ken Van Sant) picking up a hammer and brutally bludgeoning his wife and two daughters to death. The scene then shifts to a priest named "Father Benna" (Jeff Kirkendall) going to the prison to visit Charles and being told that he committed these murders because he was possessed by demons after acquiring some lumber from the infamous haunted house in Amityville. Not knowing whether to believe him or not, Father Benna then goes to where Charles worked as a utility man on a house requiring some of the same lumber taken from that same haunted house. At first, everything seems fine even though the owner of the house "Jeremy Dukane" (James Carolus) seems rather annoyed with his presence. However, it isn't until he meets Jeremy's daughter "Amy Dukane" (Marie DeLorenzo) that his suspicions intensify. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that it became quite clear early on that this was nothing more than a cheap effort to capitalize on the Amityville name--with the costume for the demon and the acting of James Carolus probably being the most obvious examples of this. On a more positive note, given the rather weak script, I thought Marie DeLorenzo actually performed in an adequate manner, all thing's considered. Likewise, I liked the way in which the director (Mark Polonia) tried every gimmick he could think of to try to enhance a picture that lacked the necessary funding required for a movie of this sort. If nothing else, at least he tried. Regardless, this was still an awful movie, and I have rated it accordingly.

Another film that was distributed by Wild Eye Releasing, the same company that's unleashed films like The Amazing Bulk and Shark Exorcist, yet this might be the worst film out of their entire catalog. This movie is such a disaster that the opening credits were made in iMovie. I'm not kidding, they use the exact same text effects that I've seen in the 2007 version of iMovie. There's also a lot of stock footage used in the movie as well, a lot of which I've seen on YouTube channels.

The problems with the editing doesn't stop there either. There is no color correction throughout the duration of the film, unless it was in the stock footage that they took for their feature film. Many of the scenes are either way too bright or way too dark, and it will either be distracting or laughable. There's also some random images that flash on the screen throughout the movie because... it's scary? Most of them are just a cheap attempt at a jumpscare, even when there's nothing suspenseful actually happening.

There's a scene where one of the priests (I can't remember any of the characters names and I don't care) is walking through a field and a picture of a skull flashes on the screen out of nowhere. That's how desperate this movie is to try and scare the audience. And when a movie is about possessed wooden planks, I can see why these were added. The intentionally ridiculous film Rubber makes more sense than this film.

The camerawork is some of the worst I have ever seen. There's a scene where the same priest is driving in his car and a bootleg monster from The Village appears, and there must have been no clear direction on set because the cameraman just shakes the camera all over the interior of the vehicle for no reason! It's not even handheld like a found footage film, it doesn't make any sense.

The sound design is awful, especially when Amy is swimming in the pool, and it sounds like they recorded the water splashing sound from 20 feet away. The music ranges from ripping off The Exorcist to tunes that make me wanna go deaf. Most of the actors in this movie read off the lines on the script with zero emotion. There's even a scene where Amy and her boyfriend are talking on the phone and it's supposed to be an emotional moment, but the boyfriend's actor seems unable to emote whatsoever and it becomes hilarious in all the wrong ways. The dialogue fares no better either.

The best part of this film is the cover, which is a lie as to the quality of the movie it's marketing. That and the few scenes that were so bad they made me laugh out loud, unfortunately those scenes aren't frequent enough for me to say it's worth seeing. The only scene I'd watch is the one where the red "demon" appears in a computer that they probably used to edit the movie, and the priest shoves the cross up against the screen and causes the entire computer to explode in a stock graphic, as that was easily the funniest part of the film. Other than that though, this is one of the few films that doesn't get anything right about film making, if you can even call it that. Consider this a 0/10, purely because I can't find a reason to give it a 1.