Overall Rating
  Awesome: 12.41%
Worth A Look: 8.97%
Average: 31.03%
Pretty Bad: 17.24%
Total Crap: 30.34%
12 reviews, 73 user ratings
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| Amityville Horror, The (2005) |
by Laura Kyle
"One of the best horror movies of the year! But that's not saying much."
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I haven’t seen the original Amityville Horror (1979) and I’m not sure what’s left over on screen from the true story backing it up -- in that film or the latest 2005 money-grab to come out of Hollywood. What I can say is a lot more than the F-bomb is dropped in this R-rated version and beginning director Andrew Douglas manages to make a decent thriller out of a pretty run-of-the-mill haunted house story.Ryan Reynolds is George Lutz, stepfather to Billy (Jesse James, the evil kid from Butterfly Effect), Michael (a very over directed Jimmy Bennett), and Chelsea (Chloe Moretz). George’s wife Kathy, played by Melissa George -- when her Australian accent and buckteeth aren’t getting in her way -- insiths they buy the haunted houthe, becauth it’sth cheap and everything they’ve ever dreamed of… who cares if an entire family was murdered there years ago? “Houses don’t kill people, people kill people,” George reasons. But little does George know, this house has the ability to make people kill people. Or so it seems.
The youngest Lutz, Chelsea, is of course the first family member to come in contact with their new home’s ghostly inhabitants (see: The Sixth Sense, Hide and Seek, The Ring, The Ring 2, Darkness Falls)… she becomes friendly with Jodie (Isabel Conner), a little girl with a nice-sized bullet hole through her pasty forehead.
Mrs. Lutz shrugs it off as an imaginary friend. But Jodie starts to become a little more persistent in her interaction with Chelsea, and suddenly, George is no longer the jocular, cool step-dad he once was – he drinks from the tap now… and spells out a death threat to his family in refrigerator magnets.
So what does Mrs. Lutz do? Why, she lets Mr. Lutz move down to the basement and take over the parenting, putting an almost sadistic twist on it. No restraining order, no “get your bags packed kids, daddy’s crazy!” To her credit, she does casually ask the local priest to check the place out, but a swarm of flies he encounters while inside is too much for his cross.
So, Mrs. Lutz' supidity buys a little time for the deeper mystery of the creepy mansion with windows like eyes, to unfold, all the while George speedily descending into madness.
Amityville Horror is not scary, per say, unless overacting children in white makeup give you the creeps.
Douglas certainly knows how to pace his film though. And with Reynolds, an original actor who has yet to find a project that really showcases this, up to bat, Douglas has a believable main character to work with.While Amityville Horror may have a little more balls than the PG-13 pseudo-horror flicks of late, it lacks the brains that are required to make it truly frightening and it’s unlikely to give you a single nightmare.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=11925&reviewer=369
originally posted: 04/25/05 07:48:28
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USA
15-Apr-2005 (R)
DVD: 04-Oct-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
14-Apr-2005
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