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the
amityville horror (2005) |
director
Andrew Douglas
screenwriter
Scott Kosar
based on
the book by
Jay Anson
and the
screenplay by
Sandor
Stern
producers
Michael Bay
Andrew Form
Brad Fuller
cinematographer
Peter Lyons Collister
music
Steve Jablonsky
editors
Roger Barton
Christian Wagner
cast
Ryan Reynolds (George Lutz)
Melissa George (Kathy Lutz)
Jesse James (Billy Lutz)
Jimmy Bennett (Michael Lutz)
Chloë Grace Moretz (Chelsea Lutz)
Rachel Nichols (Lisa)
Philip Baker Hall (Father Callaway)
Isabel Conner (Jodie)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 89m
u.s.
release: 4/15/05
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
amityville
horror truth
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According to George Lutz, who
along with his (now-deceased) wife Kathy and his three stepchildren
spent 28 days in a Long Island house before fleeing into the
night, you shouldn't trust anyone's account of that month except
his own. Jay Anson's book The Amityville Horror and the
1979 movie it inspired, he says, are filled with exaggerations
and outright lies; and the new remake, he has indicated, is no
more "based on a true story" than the original film.
Other people, over the years, have called Lutz's entire story
a hoax, maintaining that there was no haunting. Who to believe?
Certainly not the new movie version, which I found flatly unbelievable
even by horror-film standards.
It's nice that Hollywood has
taken my advice and remade a bad movie (the 1979 version
hasn't aged well) instead of tarnishing the memory of good movies.
But producer Michael Bay and screenwriter Scott Kosar, who previously
took a giant dump on the horror classic Texas
Chainsaw Massacre by giving it an uncalled-for do-over, don't even improve on
the clumsy first film. The remake does get one thing right: Ryan
Reynolds as George Lutz has more humor and humanity than big,
bearded James Brolin did. But George's transformation from healthy
stepdad to axe-fondling psycho happens too abruptly -- 89 minutes
doesn't leave much time for a plausible, gradual personality
change. And because this movie takes George much further than
either the book or the previous film did -- to the point of active,
murderous intent -- we wonder why Kathy (Melissa George) doesn't
run out on him long before the tipping point.
The Lutzes move into the huge
Long Island house despite the murders that happened there the
previous year, because a house this good and this cheap doesn't
come along every day. We only get an intermittent sense, though,
that their chief reason for sticking with the house is financial
and not, say, stupid. Stephen King, writing about the 1979 film
in Danse Macabre, posited that the real secret
of the movie's success was that it was about money troubles.
Toilets overflowing with muck, doors and windows that stick -
these are common householder frustrations. King also singled
out the scene where James Brolin searches in vain for the money
his brother-in-law set aside for his wedding caterer but then
lost (the house apparently ate it). Brolin and Margot Kidder
were an older, mid-thirtyish couple; Reynolds and George come
off like twentysomethings who could rebound easily from financial
setbacks.
Instead, the movie adds layers
onto the derangement of the family. As in the original, Kathy's
young daughter makes a new friend in Jodie, a spirit haunting
the house. In 1979, Jodie was a pig-like demon-thing. Now, Jodie
is like Samara from The Ring,
and in a scene typical of the movie's emphasis on the ugly over
the truly scary, the ghost-girl forces a hapless babysitter to
stick a finger inside the bullet hole in her head. A possessed,
axe-wielding George meets up with the family dog, with bad results
for the dog (a development the real Lutz is reportedly disgusted
with). A wall in the cellar leads to a space where a demented
reverend used to torture Indians to death. Like the Chainsaw
remake, Amityville '05 is less frightening than just unpleasant.
In the end, the legend of the
Amityville house boils down to the fracture of the family: in
the house's original murders, the teenage Ronald Defeo shotgunned
his entire family, and here George chases his stepkids around
with an axe like a bargain-basement Jack Torrance in The Shining.
The subtext here is that your stepdad resents you and will kill
you and your mom. It's not for kids, but of course that doesn't
stop some people. At the screening I attended, I saw a moronic
couple and their four-year-old daughter sitting a few
rows down. On the way out, the "mother" complimented
the little girl on not screaming during the movie: "Pretty
good for a four-year-old." Social conservatives like to
crusade against corruptive entertainment, but what good does
that do if "parents" blithely take their toddlers to
crap like this? Why not just chase your four-year-old around
with an axe and save the ticket money?
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