The first jump scare in “The Amityville Horror” made me leap from my skin. It was unexpected and done in such a way it can be a lesson in the cinematic art of saying boo! To clarify, this is not a review of the 1979 cult classic, but rather the 2005 remake.
The movie, which stars Ryan Reynolds in a fairly early role for him, follows the plot of the original story, true events that have been rehashed and relived many times. It opens with the 1974 massacre of the DeFeo family at their creepy estate in Amityville, New York, a genocide in which the assailant claimed evil voices from within the house were the reason behind his actions.
George and Kathy Lutz move into the home a year later, bringing with them three small children and the promise of a new start. Immediately after their arrival, the ghosts of Amityville torment them in classic haunted house style. It’s a similar formula to a host of 2000s era horror movies, with this one being particularly bad. Clocking in at a robust 89 minutes, “The Amityville Horror” starts out with the aforementioned scene that nearly made me wet myself, and followed up nicely with some more chilling parts. Unfortunately, it goes back to the Jump Scare + Loud Noise = All We Have well on a seemingly continuous loop, abandoning all signs of subtlety in its wake and leaving us with a terrible movie.
Ryan Reynolds is a decent actor, but here he’s simply a caricature of a typical horror movie maniac. Midway through, I actually asked myself out loud if George Lutz had somehow transitioned into Jack Torrance, as the house tries to get him to kill his family and he lumbers around in a constant sweat and bugging eyes, dragging an axe behind him. The contentious relationship between George and his three stepchildren is barely present, as George seemingly goes from loving man to a berserk freak in a matter of minutes.
Opposite Ryan Reynolds is Melissa George in the role of Kathy. Like Reynolds, George does fine with her performance in an otherwise awful movie. She has the ability to portray the loving mother with the typical horror movie stupidity. In one scene, she notices the magnetic letters on the refrigerator have changed on their own to spell out something horrific. When George questions her shock, she sees that the words have gone back to normal and responds that she is “Just seeing things I guess” as if a grown woman would think the wind reorganized the letters or something.
The children complete the Lutz clan, with a young Chloë Grace Moretz (“Carrie”) as youngest daughter Chelsea. ‘Seinfeld’ fans will recognize Philip Baker Hall as Father Callaway, the obligatory priest who knows everything about the DeFeo family and the house itself, and the beautiful Rachel Nichols rounds out the cast as a sultry babysitter that no loving parents would leave in charge of their children.
I haven’t watched the original and probably should as it is often heralded as a horror classic. This version of “The Amityville Horror” has a couple of decent scenes but is an otherwise complete disaster.
