Amityville: The Awakening

The seventeen year-old Belle Walker (Bella Thorne) moves to Long Island with her mother Joan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), her little sister Juliet (Mckenna Grace), her comatose twin brother James (Cameron Monaghan) and her aunt Candice (Jennifer Morrison). James suffered an accident and depends on the life support equipment to survive. His neurologist Dr. Milton (Kurtwood Smith) knows that the braindead James will not recover but Joan does not accept the truth and has high-hopes that her beloved son will recover. When Belle goes to school, she learns that her address is the notorious Amityville house where a father killed his family forty years ago. Belle discovers blood stains under the wallpaper of her room and soon mysterious things happen in the house. When James recovers after a flat line, Belle believes an evil thing has possessed he brother.

"Amityville: The Awakening" is another Amityville horror film with terrible story and poorly written screenplay. The characters are not well developed and the conclusion is deceptive. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Amityville: O Despertar" ("Amityville: The Awakening")

Amityville the Awakening is finally here after many, many push-backs and delays. Was it worth the wait? Well like many films that use the Amityville name, not really.

The cinematography is fine, the actors are okay. One of the biggest issues with the film itself is the audio, there are plenty of scenes where dialog is drowned out by background sound.

The film starts off on a good step, using what looks like old police footage to explain about the Defeo murders, unfortunately from there the movie makes a steady decline into worthlessness.

Instead of making the movie about the house, murders and haunting, they choose to focus on a bratty girl and her vegetable of a brother. The haunting takes a back seat to the family drama, which makes the movie even worse. Poor pacing, poor writing, the movie is less than thrilling.

Let's put it this way, there's a reason why they opted for a limited theatrical release and putting it up for free on Google play in October through December. It's a film even the producers and directors can't stand behind.

The reality is, the original Amityville was popular because it was portrayed as a true story, so the family drama was more humanized. With these other films, it's about the horror and this film completely ignores that.

There's just not a lot here to review, honestly. Stuff happens, some of it is creepy, then it's over. The only really good thing I can say about it is Cameron Monaghan delivers quite an unsettling performance, despite the fact his character is immobile for most of the movie.

This is my first movie of this entire series. I don't know, there is any connection with other movies or not but I really get the whole story without watching the previous ones. All I can say, it's a decent movie which can be enjoyed with your whole family. If I talked about story, all horror movies stories are same xD. All horror movies either start with moving into a haunted house which they didn't know :) but eventually get to know or someone has possessed someone.

Personally, I kind of love this. It was average type of movie. It has what I usually look for ''Jump scares''.

This film has had a long, strange road behind it. Starting with a Daniel Farrands (Halloween 6) and Casey La Scala (Grind) found footage style script in play, over time it was scrapped. Leading to this film. Written and directed by Franck Khalfoun (P2, Maniac).

Straight away, Khalfoun has a solid list of directed films under his belt. Being said, ones written prominently by other writers turned out a much better product. With this film, cliché and limitations are at play. Early on, this film sought a theatrical release and I can see what changed it all. It is lacking a cinematic punch. Lighting and atmosphere gave way to what was ultimately a tightly wound production schedule. Followed by even more delays. Even so, the film the film is directed well. Some effective scares and setups set a decent tone at times. Again, those missing atmospheric ingredients keep us in the dark with knowing who is at the helm.

I did find this film an interesting blend of the catatonic, ESP driven thriller Patrick with Amityvilles sense of possession an interesting take on the property. It provides a decent backstory and drama to the plot to keep the terrors grounded in reality. Solid writing there.

The rating is a problem here too. Originally an R, it was recut to suit a PG-13. Why? The Ryan Reynolds remake was a hard R and found solid success. This merely added less scares and a plethora of cutaways. Missed opportunities and a waste of filmmakers time and money that could've gone elsewhere.

The actors are actually quite solid, ranging from new stars and seasoned ones. They manage to convey conviction to each of their roles, even when moments seem over done.

The issue here is that this film is an okay film mostly because of its delay, but also because of its redundancy. How many Amityville films do we have at this point? Including redbox DTV's, it's off the charts. Hence why Farrands and La Scalas earlier premise may have been a better pay off.

Instead of replaying the Amityville saga again and again, maybe a modern deconstruction of the age old tale is just what that old haunted house needs to set those demon eyed Windows ablaze again.