OK, a whopping 32 years after the Lutz family fled the house of their ‘nightmares’, the Benson family move in. This is the tenth Amityville film and this time. in keeping with the times I guess, it’s a found footage film. I rather liked that idea as soon as I found out as I love found footage films; why the hell not?
The story is a very familiar one; family move into house, the house is haunted, shit happens… hey it’s Amityville.
The house itself has mysteriously relocated to the suburbs and doesn’t really come across as the same iconic house from The Amityville Horror (1979) at all. You know, I’m just saying, it is meant to be the same house…
Anyway, the family are OK actors/actresses I guess; the Amityville series can boast some very fine actors over its long history (Burt Young being one of my favourites) as well as some ‘not so good’ and these people definitely fall into the latter category, without doubt.
I think there’s some atmosphere; it’s kinda scary if you watch it late at night on your own in a darkened room. The effects aren’t particularly subtle, I thought pretty effective though and there’s no way I’d call them atrociously bad; I think there are clearly certain budget restraints going on here and ‘suspending disbelief’ (which I’m pretty big on, you may have noticed) helps this wagon to roll a little, but at the same time they didn’t do a bad job.
In places it’s pretty eerie; now that’s not bad all things considered and I would count myself a casual fan of this one. I tend to only recommend films that I don’t have to ‘try’ with so I can’t really recommend this film in the same way as I would, say, the ‘Paranormal Activity’ series, for example, and even that has its haters although I think it’s fantastic. But there’s something about this I want to recommend. I liked it, quite a lot, but I’m not sure you will; you might well think what a load of old shit! To me, it’s a difficult one to review.
