Things went quiet again for the Amityville series after the 2005 remake wasn't particularly well received. Then, in 2011 a certain little company called The Asylum, known for their 'mockbusters' and, more recently, the Sharknado movie series, came out with The Amityville Haunting and started the whole low-budget assembly line up again.
After some brief text reminding us of what's previously gone on in 112 Ocean Avenue (just in case you've not been paying attention for the past nine days) and some brief footage of some horny teens breaking into the house and getting themselves killed, we meet the Benson family, who are to be the newest family to move in to the Amityville house and be tormented by the spirits there. Said spirits waste absolutely no time getting started, as the sale isn't even finalised before the real estate agent dies in the driveway, and things don't slow down after that. Youngest daughter Melanie makes friends with John Matthew, the ghost of one of the DeFeo children, ghostly banging, laughter and screams come from the vents and crawlspace of the house, and several incidental characters die at the hands of the ghosts (all conveniently off-screen). This time around we get to watch the action through middle child Tyler's camera and the CCTV installed throughout the house, but just how long will the Benson family survive in the house?
In the past, I've said some less-than-charitable things about films produced by The Asylum, but since discovering their take on The Walking Dead, Z Nation, I've softened towards them somewhat. That doesn't mean that I'm about to shower The Amityville Haunting with praise, however, because it's not deserving of very much of it. It's a zero-budget, found footage knock-off of The Amityville Horror that couldn't even afford a cheap replica or mock-up of the infamous house at 112 Ocean Avenue - we don't once see the outside of the house and/or those iconic quarter-circle windows, which technically means that it's not even an Amityville movie really - just a generic haunted house movie.
As I said in the synopsis above, The Amityville Haunting is a found footage film, with the footage split between Tyler's video camera and the fixed CCTV around the house. The former is, of course, incredibly annoying, with shaky cam and constant static interference and blackouts that are clearly supposed to be caused by ghostly influences, but there are one or two actually creepy moments with it, such as when the static picks up unearthly screams and moans that no-one else hears. The CCTV footage, being from fixed cameras, is better, and it's here that I'll actually give the film some praise because it delivers some moments that are genuinely creepy. One moment, for example, has two people sitting in the front room and talking about some of the events in the house, but while the camera is primarily pointed at them, we can also see a semi-transparent figure just standing in the doorway. In another scene, the family is sitting around the dining table when there is a power cut. When the power comes back on, the ghost of one of the DeFeos is standing against a wall, staring down at the family who can't see him. There are a few moments like this, which go to show that the people making these films for The Asylum have at least some talent in filmmaking and could probably do quite well if given an actual budget and time to make a film.
That's about as far as I can go with the praise, however, because the rest of the film is pretty bad. Just about all of the cast repeatedly blow their lines throughout the film, although that doesn't really matter too much because they also talk over each other non-stop - repeating the same lines over and over at increasing volume levels. They're not particularly good actors either, which just makes it all the more painful to watch. Special mention has to go to the scene where the father of the family, who we've had beaten into us throughout the film is ex-military, has a breakdown and goes full-on Apocalypse Amityville in the study, shouting orders at imaginary troops and crawling on his belly across the room... while his family just watch in awkward silence, almost as if this isn't even the first time this has happened. And then there's the film's ending, where we see autopsy reports for each member of the family (oh, yeah, spoiler: they all die at the end) where "extreme" is spelt "extream" and "cord" is spelt "chord". If not for the sinus pain in my jaw right now, this alone would have set my teeth to grinding so hard you could hear them from space.
The Amityville Haunting is not a good film, although it does have some genuinely unsettling moments. More importantly for us, it seems to have reopened the floodgates for a whole new slew of Amityville films made by anyone with a camera and a vaguely Amityville-related plot...
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