House for sale at 112 Ocean Ave.: beautiful colonial on Long Island. Blood flows from the faucets, strange voices echo from the basement, there’s a little girl with a hole in her head that resides in the upstairs closet, but this gorgeous waterfront property has a boat house …
SOLD.
The latest in a string of low-budget, low-quality horror remakes, “The Amityville Horror” proves the tale of a possessed house and the “fury” it unleashes upon its residents is best left in its 1979 predecessor.
Based loosely on actual events and the Jay Anson novel of the same title, this film provides less horror and slightly more plot than the Mariah Carey original “Glitter.” The audience’s only real terror is witnessing the contrived dialogue and plotline, delivered by a cast comprised mainly of Hollywood unknowns.
The film offers a quick glimpse into the November 1974 killings of the DeFeo family by eldest son Ronald after “the voices told him to do it” and then fast forwards to a year later when the Lutz family moves into the abandoned home, unaware of its supernatural inhabitants. However, from that point forward, it struggles to establish any sort of connection between the members of the family and provides a chain of second-rate scare tactics, generally in the form of short-lived supernatural experiences or grotesque looking images that are never examined.
Following a cheesy move-in-day montage, once George (Ryan Reynolds, “Blade: Trinity”) and Kathy Lutz (Melissa George, “Alias”) and their three children settle into their home, they are subjected to everyone’s “worst” fears. The scariest comes in the form of a small girl named Lucy who haunts the closet of the upstairs bedroom where she was killed a year earlier. With her pale decaying skin, greasy hair, bullet hole in her head and short stature, the girl doubles as both a “frightening” image and an eerie playmate for the Lutzes’ youngest child.
Of course, nothing spells scary better than magnets possessed by the devil. At one point, alphabet magnets on the refrigerator spell out the catch phrase of the house’s demons. The motto “Katchem and Killem” spread across the door in alternating primary colors is laughable at best. The demons show they mean business and demonstrate a lack of manners when a grotesque figure follows one of the Lutz children into the bathroom late at night and shows her pallid face in the mirror for an instant. She quickly disappears before the child even sees her. In another pitiful attempt from the special-effects department, the bathtub later sprouts multiple arms and makes an effort to drown George.
Sadly, the bathtub scene was most likely another reason to display the film’s overriding focal point: Ryan Reynolds’ abs. “The Amityville Horror” offers more shots of Reynolds shirtless than of the Lutz children, as the film shamelessly flaunts the his chiseled six-pack — as if to compensate for lack of better content. Although Reynolds’ character George was supposed to be a lowly contractor, his form appeared more like that of a professional athlete with a Grizzly Adams-style beard.
Despite these production flaws, Reynolds and his co-star Melissa George do an adequate job with the material they were given. Reynolds portrays a convincing transition into an altered state of mind brought on by the house, although one couldn’t help thinking, “Man, Van Wilder sure has changed. What is he doing with that axe?” He effortlessly switches from caring stepfather to possessed insomniac as the film progresses. Likewise, George plays a great concerned mother of three — a nice change of pace from her previous role as a hardened double agent on the ABC show “Alias.”
Philip Baker Hall also delivers a noteworthy performance and provides unintentional comic relief as Father Calloway, a priest who makes an unsuccessful attempt to purge the house of its demons. Calloway arrives at the Lutzes’ with an exorcism supply briefcase that appeared somewhat like a chemistry set for the ordained, but he is quickly turned away by a swarm of demonic houseflies that escaped from a vent.
Overall, “The Amityville Horror” showcases yet another failed attempt at a remake by producer Michael Bay and writer Scott Kosar, who teamed up for the resurrection of horror classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in 2003.
“Amityville” uses predictable scare tactics, while its special effects combine hints of “The Ring” and “The Grudge” to create a lackluster end product. After scores of remakes, the use of pasty children with stringy hair and contorted features in horror movies is played out. Hollywood really needs to think of something new.
Grade: C
