A desperate single mother moves with her three children into the notorious, supposedly haunted, real-life Amityville house to try and use its dark powers to cure her comatose son. Things go horribly wrong.
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On the night of November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. took a high-powered rifle and murdered his entire family as they slept. At his trial, DeFeo claimed that "voices" in the house commanded him to kill. This is their story.
Director:
Daniel Farrands
Stars:
John Robinson,
Chelsea Ricketts,
Paul Ben-Victor
Five people spend the night in an abandoned house, the Amityville haunted house, and soon find themselves terrorized by assorted ghosts, venomous insects and ghostly apparitions.
A family become imprisoned in their home by intruders, who force them to play a life-and-death game, where the mysterious rules become clear as the night unfolds.
Director:
Sean Carter
Stars:
Bella Thorne,
Chandler Riggs,
Ioan Gruffudd
Belle, her little sister, and her comatose twin brother move into a new house with their single mother Joan in order to save money to help pay for her brother's expensive healthcare. But when strange phenomena begin to occur in the house including the miraculous recovery of her brother, Belle begins to suspect her Mother isn't telling her everything and soon realizes they just moved into the infamous Amityville house.Written by
The Weinstein Company
The original plan for this reboot was "Amityville: The Lost Tapes." Written by Casey La Scala and Daniel Farrands and utilizing the found footage angle, the plot involved "an ambitious female television news intern, on the verge of breaking the most famous haunted house case in the world, who leads a team of journalists, clergymen and paranormal researchers into an investigation of the bizarre events that will come to be known as The Amityville Horror, only to unwittingly open a door to the unreal that she may never be able to close." After a couple of delays, this concept was eventually scrapped. See more »
Goofs
This movie was set in 2014, but Belle's username in the movie poster in Instagram-style says she is '99. However, in the movie it's mentioned she's 17 which would mean she was born in '97. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Investigator:
[in archival news footage]
We have six members that were found last night, in bed, shot and killed.
See more »
Alternate Versions
US prints remove Harvey Weinstein's executive producer credit, due to the scandal surrounding him prior to its release. See more »
When The Sun Came Down
Written by Mathieu Carratier & Greg Taieb (as Gregory J Taieb)
Performed by Artificial Darkness
Courtesy of Mathieu Carratier and Gregory J Taieb See more »
After four or five years of countless problems in pre and post production, trying so desperately to get released this movie finally does...in one of the saddest ways that is pretty unbecoming of something that fought so hard for so long, by throwing it out digitally for free, plus with a severely limited theatrical release later on....wow.
The story is about a teenage girl named Belle (played by Bella Thorne) and her family that move into the Amityville house. Her family consists of her mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh), her little sister (Mckenna Grace) and her twin brother who is in a coma for two years (Cameron Monaghan). From there, freaky things start to occur around the house to the point where Belle isn't sure what is real anymore. Within a short amount of time of moving into the house with a terrifying past, it appears that her comatose brother's state begins to improve; however the tensions between Belle and her mother increase, making us wonder where the real threat lies in the family. Her possibly possessed brother or the mother that refuses to let anything stop her from making the family whole again.
Anyways, after all of this time of waiting and wondering what could be so wrong about this movie to warrant such a long hold on this production and I am still not entirely sure what the problem was. It's mostly fine. There are some problems with it for sure; particularly some scenes that are fairly obvious re- shoots/additional content filmed and edited in at a later date from initial production; because there are characters that practically have nothing to do with the plot aside from providing needless exposition about things we already know and also declaring that the "Amityville Horror" film franchise exists as movies in this movie's universe...that's perplexing to say the least. I mean, why? That's just confusing and also is something that kind of makes the lead character look dumb for not knowing about the Amityville house since the movies exist in her reality. I am curious as to what these 're- shoot' scenes had replaced, because I feel like there was probably some more material that delved into the relationship between the family or maybe the medical investigation going on with the brother, but was unfortunately cut and replaced with some pointless characters and uninteresting dialog.
Also there are some disturbing themes that the movie very briefly introduces, but does not flesh them out or resolve them in much of a satisfying way. Plus there is a sequence about halfway into this movie that feels out of place or cut incorrectly because a certain 'scare' occurs in this movie that involves the youngest sister, but then is completely dropped and forgotten literally in the next shot. It was jarring. There is editing like that which pops up here and there, but is never too terrible to enrage or confuse too drastically.
Aside from the gripes I've listed, I will say that this movie is still mostly fine. It has a decent enough story with decent enough characters. There's nothing groundbreaking in terms of its writing, but it works enough to carry itself along in its very short run time. The actors all do well in their roles, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh who has to play this mother at her wits end in her attempts to bring her son out of his vegetative state and will do anything to make that happen. There are times where she feels legitimately intimidating without playing it over-the-top. The majority of the scares work pretty well, particularly since this movie focuses more on character and plot and less on jump scares, even though there are some that happen from time to time. Luckily the jump scares that do happen aren't many, nor all that badly handled.
In my opinion, this is an okay movie; it has enough character development, story, scares and atmosphere to hold itself up. I feel that it has had a lot of fluctuation over the years in its quality and it may have been better if it hadn't gone through all those years of post-production hell. Comparing it to other films that have gone through similar experiences though, I will say it is probably one of the better examples of its kind. So if you give this movie a shot then you'll most likely watch it and be fine with going about the rest of your day. It won't stick in your mind as anything great, but a serviceable flick. Sometimes that's all you need from a little horror movie around Halloween time.
17 of 38 people found this review helpful.
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After four or five years of countless problems in pre and post production, trying so desperately to get released this movie finally does...in one of the saddest ways that is pretty unbecoming of something that fought so hard for so long, by throwing it out digitally for free, plus with a severely limited theatrical release later on....wow.
The story is about a teenage girl named Belle (played by Bella Thorne) and her family that move into the Amityville house. Her family consists of her mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh), her little sister (Mckenna Grace) and her twin brother who is in a coma for two years (Cameron Monaghan). From there, freaky things start to occur around the house to the point where Belle isn't sure what is real anymore. Within a short amount of time of moving into the house with a terrifying past, it appears that her comatose brother's state begins to improve; however the tensions between Belle and her mother increase, making us wonder where the real threat lies in the family. Her possibly possessed brother or the mother that refuses to let anything stop her from making the family whole again.
Anyways, after all of this time of waiting and wondering what could be so wrong about this movie to warrant such a long hold on this production and I am still not entirely sure what the problem was. It's mostly fine. There are some problems with it for sure; particularly some scenes that are fairly obvious re- shoots/additional content filmed and edited in at a later date from initial production; because there are characters that practically have nothing to do with the plot aside from providing needless exposition about things we already know and also declaring that the "Amityville Horror" film franchise exists as movies in this movie's universe...that's perplexing to say the least. I mean, why? That's just confusing and also is something that kind of makes the lead character look dumb for not knowing about the Amityville house since the movies exist in her reality. I am curious as to what these 're- shoot' scenes had replaced, because I feel like there was probably some more material that delved into the relationship between the family or maybe the medical investigation going on with the brother, but was unfortunately cut and replaced with some pointless characters and uninteresting dialog.
Also there are some disturbing themes that the movie very briefly introduces, but does not flesh them out or resolve them in much of a satisfying way. Plus there is a sequence about halfway into this movie that feels out of place or cut incorrectly because a certain 'scare' occurs in this movie that involves the youngest sister, but then is completely dropped and forgotten literally in the next shot. It was jarring. There is editing like that which pops up here and there, but is never too terrible to enrage or confuse too drastically.
Aside from the gripes I've listed, I will say that this movie is still mostly fine. It has a decent enough story with decent enough characters. There's nothing groundbreaking in terms of its writing, but it works enough to carry itself along in its very short run time. The actors all do well in their roles, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh who has to play this mother at her wits end in her attempts to bring her son out of his vegetative state and will do anything to make that happen. There are times where she feels legitimately intimidating without playing it over-the-top. The majority of the scares work pretty well, particularly since this movie focuses more on character and plot and less on jump scares, even though there are some that happen from time to time. Luckily the jump scares that do happen aren't many, nor all that badly handled.
In my opinion, this is an okay movie; it has enough character development, story, scares and atmosphere to hold itself up. I feel that it has had a lot of fluctuation over the years in its quality and it may have been better if it hadn't gone through all those years of post-production hell. Comparing it to other films that have gone through similar experiences though, I will say it is probably one of the better examples of its kind. So if you give this movie a shot then you'll most likely watch it and be fine with going about the rest of your day. It won't stick in your mind as anything great, but a serviceable flick. Sometimes that's all you need from a little horror movie around Halloween time.