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The Hamiltons

  • 2006
  • R
  • 1h 26m
IMDb RATING
5.0/10
9.1K
YOUR RATING
The Hamiltons (2006)
Trailer for The Hamiltons
Play trailer2:09
1 Video
18 Photos
DramaHorrorThriller

Four young adult siblings, who harbor some dark secrets, try to fend for themselves after the mysterious death of their parents.Four young adult siblings, who harbor some dark secrets, try to fend for themselves after the mysterious death of their parents.Four young adult siblings, who harbor some dark secrets, try to fend for themselves after the mysterious death of their parents.

  • Directors
    • Mitchell Altieri
    • Phil Flores
  • Writers
    • Mitchell Altieri
    • Phil Flores
    • Adam Weis
  • Stars
    • Cory Knauf
    • Samuel Child
    • Joseph McKelheer
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    5.0/10
    9.1K
    YOUR RATING
    • Directors
      • Mitchell Altieri
      • Phil Flores
    • Writers
      • Mitchell Altieri
      • Phil Flores
      • Adam Weis
    • Stars
      • Cory Knauf
      • Samuel Child
      • Joseph McKelheer
    • 85User reviews
    • 58Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 wins total

    Videos1

    The Hamiltons
    Trailer 2:09
    The Hamiltons

    Photos17

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    + 14
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    Top cast23

    Edit
    Cory Knauf
    Cory Knauf
    • Francis Hamilton
    Samuel Child
    Samuel Child
    • David Hamilton
    Joseph McKelheer
    Joseph McKelheer
    • Wendell Hamilton
    Mackenzie Firgens
    Mackenzie Firgens
    • Darlene Hamilton
    Rebekah Hoyle
    Rebekah Hoyle
    • Samantha Teal
    Brittany Daniel
    Brittany Daniel
    • Dani Cummings
    Al Liner
    • Paul Glenn
    Jena Hunt
    Jena Hunt
    • Kitty Davies
    Tara Glass
    • Jenna Smith
    Larry Laverty
    • Larry Davies
    Joe Egender
    Joe Egender
    • Allen Davies
    Nicholas Fanella
    • Lenny Hamilton
    Jackie Honea
    • Mrs. Hamilton
    John Krause
    • Mr. Hamilton
    Nathan Parker
    • Hot Pants
    Jason Pennetta
    • David's Friend
    Andrew Casden
    • Trevor
    Hannah Weiss
    • Girl in Restaurant
    • Directors
      • Mitchell Altieri
      • Phil Flores
    • Writers
      • Mitchell Altieri
      • Phil Flores
      • Adam Weis
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews85

    5.09.1K
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    Featured reviews

    7carlykristen

    The Hamiltons is a thinking person's "horror" film with a slow pace.

    The Hamiltons 2005 (Theatrical "R", After Dark Horrorfest) – Directed by The Butcher Brothers, Winner of the Santa Barbara Intl Film Festival and the Malibu Film Festivals.

    The Hamiltons are an unusual family that recent lost their parents. The family now consists of older brother David, who is struggling with his homosexuality and the pressures of running the household, the twins Darlene & Wendell, who are devious troublemakers, and younger brother Francis, who is coming to terms with his family and his place in the world.

    The film starts out explaining that The Hamiltons siblings recently lost their parents and they have moved several times within the past couple of years. Twin Wendell soon kidnaps two young girls and it becomes apparent that The Hamiltons are not as they seem. Sensitive Francis grows weary of their ways, but is scared to be alone. Does he decide to do the right thing or stick by his family no matter what?

    This is not by any means a typical horror film, but a thinking person's horror film. Those looking for gore and scares will be disappointed. It has an original story with great dialogue showcasing real problems within every family. It is ultimately a very accurate portrayal of a real family dealing with growing pains that features a slight twist at the end. During the end scene, you hear Francis giving a creepy voice-over almost giving it a documentary feel.

    Cory Knauf gives a solid performance as Francis, the young man that has so much to say, but cannot. He really shows how torn Francis was in his decision and the isolation felt by many teens struggling to find their place as they hit adulthood. Mackenzie Firgens gives a great turn as twin Darlene who is vicious and sexy at the same time. You will love the scene where she chases Kitty through the house. (And maybe the one where she kisses her own brother!?!)

    My only quibble is there is minimal gore and violence. During violent interactions, the camera turns away, so very little is caught on film. There is also an opening scene with Brittany Daniel that looked frightening at first, but there were some jittery camera movements and it fizzled with no pay out.

    Bottom Line: The Hamiltons is a subtle "horror" film with a slow pace. This is more of a thinking man's (or woman's) horror film. Gorehounds should pass.

    Rating: 7/10

    Molly Celaschi www.HorrorYearbook.com MySpace.com/HorrorYearbook
    7dgaither

    Efficiently captures the spirit of 70s and 80s horror

    I saw this film at Cinequest, the San Jose Film Festival, in March of 2006. The Hamiltons is a movie with writing and directing credit going to "The Butcher Brothers". I think this is a name we will be seeing more from in the future. They've managed to put together a good old-fashioned scare fest, with some very powerful shocks along the way, all while using very basic gore and makeup effects.

    The movie is about a group of grown siblings, whose parents have died, who are living together as a family unit, trying to be a "normal" suburban family. But they have a terrible secret. Part of that secret is that they abduct and kill people (mostly lovely young women). The rest of the secret is what keeps us involved throughout the mayhem that follows.

    They've managed to create an atmosphere similar to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, without being quite so gruesome or so unrelenting. Mixed among the powerful killing and torture scenes are scenes of banal domestic dysfunction. They are obviously big horror fans and sprinkle the movie with references to the movies genre fans love.

    My only complaint is that they overindulge in camera tricks. Some of the tricks are very effective. In the pre-credit scene a woman is killed, but the violence occurs in a series of extremely rapid cuts (I'm guessing maybe 3 per second) which keeps us from quite seeing what's happening. This allows our bloody imaginations to do much of the work and keeps us from noticing how simple the make-up effects are. I would like to have seen them use this technique again, but instead they went on to try every camera trick they could think of.

    The youngest brother is camcording much of the family action, he says for a school project. This gives the directors an excuse to have many square-cropped, bouncy scenes, with jagged edges around the objects and low resolution. Other scenes are grainy with a shot-on-videotape-in-poor-lighting look. Much of the movie is in high-resolution, beautiful 35mm. Then, even more distractingly, they start mixing up the resolution and cropping mattes, so that we get a high resolution square shot, supposedly from the camcorder, so the actor can look good in close up. There's a couple of scenes where the shot alternates between two actors in dialog and one of them is shot in the grainy tape-look format while the other one is in high-res 35mm. Nearly all of the violent scenes are augmented? by quick-motion, tracers, vibrating cameras, or something else to add impact not present in the action itself. I'm sure they had fun playing all these camera games. The problem is that it draws us out of the story. I spent much of the movie's time thinking about such things, instead of wondering what they were going to do to those poor girls next. There are a few soundtrack scares, but they don't overdo this.

    If it ever gets released, I'll want to see it again. The camera tricks do not make the movie unwatchable, they're just distracting. It's a much better movie than a lot of low-budget horror and it left me with the kind of feeling I get from the old 70s and 80s slashers, but it's not as graphic.
    4cblakeJoey

    Snoozer B-movie

    This is the second movie I saw for Horrorfest this past weekend, The Gravedancers being the first. Gravedancers was better. I can only guess from watching this that the production must have been quite limited. I will admit the story started out interesting but really fizzled for me in the end. We weren't really given time to sympathize or understand any of the characters which only made each of their erratic characteristics even more annoying. I have to mention that there was also a bit of mis-casting with a 12-year-old boy acting as Sheriff. The only reason I sat through the whole film was to find out what the big secret was, which turned out to not be all that interesting. Some more background about the family would have helped but they didn't really seem like a family at all to begin with.

    To me, this film is so amateur that I couldn't even see putting it on DVD. The four rating is for the initial potential the story might have had. This was one to skip for horrorfest.
    5p-rohal

    A poor attempt at an artsy horror flick

    This was one of the films from the After Dark Horrorfest and like most of them it was incredibly poor. The film is painfully slow. It might have worked as a 30 minute short but as a feature film it bored the hell out of me. The film tries to set up this mystery as to what it is they are doing and why they are doing it but by the time it was revealed I had already lost interest in the story.

    Also, the acting in this film is incredibly poor, especially the older brother, who at times is laughable. This film was obviously made on a low budget but I can forgive the low production values. You work with what you've got, lots of great films have been made on a tiny budget (night of the living dead). However, what I can't forgive is a lack of talent. The writing and acting were downright horrible and if that's the case then the budget is irrelevant because the film is going to suck. They were clearly trying to make this an art house film but instead they just made a stinker that will put you to sleep before the first hour.
    2Platypuschow

    The Hamiltons: Insufferably awful

    Plot

    Trying to move on with their lives, and keep their family together after the untimely demise of their parents, the four Hamilton siblings are left all alone to fend for themselves. At first glance, the Hamiltons seem like an ordinary family, and they will do everything in their power to adjust to their new neighbourhood; however, troubled Francis' video camera reveals that there is more to the grieving newcomers than meets the eye. After all, is it normal to keep people captive in your basement

    Cast

    Nobody I was familiar with.

    Verdict

    I made a booboo, I watched The Thompsons first, I didn't realize it was a sequel! That I quite enjoyed so upon booting The Hamiltons up I was fairly excited, whoops that was another booboo.

    The Hamiltons focuses on this dysfunctional vampire (Of a sort) family. The trouble is the film is cheap, looks cheap, sounds cheap, is cheap and though I watch a lot of indie movies and am generally unphased by this The Hamiltons came across unforgivably so and was very distracting. I wish it had distracted me more then I might not have noticed how terrible the rest of the film is, it's lifeless, it goes nowhere, the characters are wretched and the narration is so tacky it takes you away from what you're watching (But not in the way you'd want).

    This isn't a vampire film, this is barely horror.

    Rants

    Let me be clear, I'm not overly fussed about budgets. A few years ago I remember watching one called Rednecks vs Aliens? I think. It looked like it had been recorded on the oldest VHS recorder imaginable and by someone who was having a seizure from start to finish. But this didn't matter because the film was oddly enjoyable. I don't care about budget but I've always said, keep in line with your budget. If you have a three figure budget, don't make a movie about aliens invading earth.

    Breakdown.

    Ugly Lifeless Poorly made.

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    Related interests

    Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)
    Drama
    Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby (1968)
    Horror
    Cho Yeo-jeong in Parasite (2019)
    Thriller

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Part of the 2006 After Dark Horrorfest: 8 Films To Die For
    • Goofs
      When Wendell and David are carrying the blond girl; she has a denim miniskirt, then denim pants and different shoes, then back to the denim miniskirt and original shoes. When "she" has long pants, this is obviously the camera operator they are carrying to get the point of view of the person being carried.
    • Quotes

      Francis Hamilton: The twins. They've always been distant from the family. Wendell is the main reason why we move a lot. He just got out of jail for biting some guy's ear off in a Cheesy Chuck's pizza parlor up north. Darlene is just as mean but more refined. Like when we were kids, she used to lock me in the closet just to hear me scream, and hours later would let me out, pretending she was the one who saved me. And I always fell for it.

    • Crazy credits
      Just after the ending credits roll, more home video is shown of what looks like a normal family having bought a new home, and then it fades to red.
    • Connections
      Followed by The Thompsons (2012)
    • Soundtracks
      Kiss The Light
      Written by Nathan Montiel

      Performed by Nathan Montiel

      Courtesy of Metaphisik Records

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    FAQ19

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • April 29, 2006 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Los hamilton
    • Filming locations
      • Petaluma, California, USA
    • Production companies
      • San Francisco Independent Cinema
      • Industrial City Films
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $321,875
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $2,482,000
      • Nov 19, 2006
    • Gross worldwide
      • $321,875
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 26m(86 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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