It’s the 13th of the month, and you know what that means! Time for another YNTE Horror Night! This month we’re going back a bit to take a look at a “classic” and see if it holds up today (Spoiler alert! It doesn’t!). This month: The Amityville Horror (the original, not the Ryan Reynolds remake).
As always, tons of spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned!
Classics are hard. Sometimes you can recognize that a movie had some sort of significance for the genre, that it inspired the movies that came after it. A movie can be important, for what it caused to happen. But when viewed compared against what it inspired, sometimes classics jut don’t stand up on their own any more. And sadly, this is one of those films. I can’t argue whether or not this movie was any good in 1979, I just don’t have the context to make that call. But in 2011? Wowzers. This movie is so bad I could only sum up its badness in the word “Wowsers”.
This movie tells the story of a house. A guy snaps and murders his entire family in this house. Then, one year later, a family moves in and suddenly experiences strange phenomenon.
The thing about this movie that really set it apart at the time is that it is based on a book that was published as nonfiction. However, since, many inaccuracies have been found with the book that sort of calls into question if the whole thing was just made up. If you have a mind that is at all skeptical, you have to assume the whole story is made up.
That’s a shame, because this might be a relatively creepy true story, it’s a total rubbish film.
This movie lacks character or plot, it’s just a series of events that the actors don’t really seem that phased by. Isn’t the point of scary movies that the people in them, you know, get scared? They’re the eyes of the audience, they should be showing us how to react. Is something supposed to scare us? The characters should be scared. James Brolin is perfectly stonefaced and emotionless for 95% of the movie. Margot Kidder is pretty calm when scary stuff happens but freaks the fuck out randomly when nothing is happening.
Random girlfriend insight: “This appears to be made in the 70s. The thing you need to know about the 70s is that everybody was out of their mind on Cocaine at the time. So that might explain some things.”
There are some freaky things that happen. There is a preponderance of flies. There’s a little girl who has a creepy imaginary friend. Windows and doors open and close on their own. They find a room in the basement that isn’t on the floorplan and ha no doors or windows, and is painted completely red on the inside. Perhaps scariest of all, James Brolin and Margot Kidder frequently run around with no pants on.
But, these events just happen. They don’t build toward something. The actors don’t react to them. They just happen. A bunch of them happen. Then the movie ends.
There’s sort of a plot there at the end that suggest that since James Brolin looks exactly like the killer from before that he’s going to murder his family. But he doesn’t. They just leave. That’s the big climax: they move out.
It does, however, feature a scene of a nun playing basketball. So there’s that.
Catch up on past installments:
The Last Exorcism
Friday the 13th (1980)
Scream 4
Scream 3
Freddy Vs. Jason
Scream 2
Scream
Red State
April Fool’s Day (1986)
Leprechaun
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Valentine
Jason X
Jason Goes to Hell – The Final Friday
Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan
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