Amityville Karen

There are a lot of indie horror people in this and behind this and none of them were able to save it because it's pretty much a mess. It starts out kind of promising with Karen karening all over the place, but the actress who plays her seems to be doing a lot of ad libbing and it's uh, not great. It's inexplicably 104 minutes long and draaagggggggssssss in so many places.

The last 15 minutes are half of the movies 58 producers each given a couple of lines to say in a "breaking news" alert that is tacked on just to give them a part in the movie for the money they contributed lol and then after that it just drops the news reel and has the rest of them saying bizarre things that seem like inside jokes nobody gets until it finally ends.

Still, James Duval can get it and Dawna Lee Heising is in this way too briefly and I'll watch anything she's in a hundred times but it actually works against the movie here because as soon as we saw her, Taylor and I both agreed she should have played Karen. Now that would have been the 5 star gold I wanted!

Honestly, this movie is horrible. Many of the actors seem to simply read their lines -- you can see their eyes moving while looking down or off-camera, clearly reading the text. The plot barely makes any sense. Many of the scenes look as though they could just be improv'd. The dialog is really bad. In addition, the costumes/dress and makeup are also ridiculous -- Francesca spends the entire time in a ridiculous wig, half the scenes feature actors who are sweating profusely, and Phillips spends the film dressed in a pair of odd shorts and a button-up white shirt that's about 3 sizes too large for him. Finally, the film clocks it an almost an hour and 45 minutes, which is about half an hour too long for the amount of story that's actually in the movie. Honestly, unless one wants to be supportive of Phillips or Francesca, there's really no reason to watch this.

I knew it would be bad. I didn't expect Val Lewton. I didn't even expect James Nguyen or Ed Wood. Just--not this. It's not even fun bad.

The script doesn't even try. Karen is a poorly-written caricature of the women who make lives miserable with petty displays of power. Her boyfriend(?) makes James Nguyen's protagonists look like Cary Grant. None of the actors add anything. They say the lines, and their paychecks didn't bounce.

Its budget is low, and there's no sign they even tried to be creative within it. Absolutely no scares or tension in any of the scenes.

Still, they'll make enough to recoup expenses.

You know what? I was all for rating this a 1, and then at the last minute I changed my mind. Yeah it was poor, but it was fun. You get an air of authenticity that you just don't get from a well-polished movie. Stuff like forgetting lines and improvising and stuff like that usually isn't captured on film.

The fact it took them 5 days to make is no surprise, they were obviously on a budget and a timescale. They could have invested some of their money in a better mic though, some of the scenes I could hardly hear what they were saying.

I sometimes question why these people start out in these movies, and I know you have to start somewhere. And when that somewhere is here, I wonder where you actually think you're going to go. But ya know if someone offered me a part in a movie I'd probably take it.

This film begins with an obnoxious woman by the name of "Karen" (Lauren Francesca) making life difficult for everyone in her particular neighborhood by yelling at them over minor issues and then subsequently complaining to the local authorities to further harass them. It seems that everything offends her and the only way she can be happy is to make others miserable. To make matters even worse, her job as a compliance officer gives her a sense of entitlement which actually amplifies her power when it comes to petty grievances of that sort. Things change, however, when she steals of bottle of wine from a local winery without realizing that it was made in Amityville and an evil spirit appears upon drinking it--resulting in the obnoxious busybody turning into a psychopathic killer. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I wasn't honestly expecting too much from this movie and, as a result, I wasn't too disappointed overall. Obviously, the plot was ridiculous to start with, but it was the awful script and the horrid acting which negatively impacted this movie the most. No doubt there will be some who will say that this film was "so bad that it was good." And if they enjoy a movie for that reason then I applaud them for it. Unfortunately, I have never subscribed to that opinion, and I have always believed that a bad movie is just that. That being said, I have rated this one accordingly.