Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on April 15, 2005, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
There was no more reason to remake The Amityville Horror than there was to remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Dawn of the Dead, but in this case, at least, there was significant room for improvement. The original 1979 Amityville was and remains pretty hokey stuff, and the only thing to truly distinguish it from countless other haunted-house movies was its supposed basis in then-recent fact. It’s hard to imagine a modern audience getting the same kind of “This really happened!” charge out of the material, and perhaps the only way to address that aspect today would be to acknowledge the notoriety and doubt surrounding the case (Amityville 3-D took a few entertaining stabs in that direction back in 1983).
But take away the truth-is-scarier-than-fiction appeal, and what you’re left with is just another story of a family whose new “dream home” turns out to be a nightmare. Director Andrew Douglas and scriptwriter Scott Kosar have stated their desires to add sociopolitical subtext and a deeper exploration of character to the new Amityville, but what’s left in the 81-minute (plus about eight minutes of end credits) feature is a barrage of been-there, screamed-at-that spooky-house conventions that are too outlandish to be accepted as truth and too familiar to generate honest fear. It doesn’t help that (as happened with some audiences when The Exorcist was rereleased) the original’s most memorable elements have been repeatedly rehashed and riffed on in the years since. Watching the remake’s Lutz family ignore suggestions that maybe sticking around the haunted dwelling is a bad idea, viewers of a certain age could be forgiven for recalling Eddie Murphy’s classic “Too bad we can’t stay, baby” routine.
At first, the film does paint an empathetic and credible portrait of the Lutzes, and the casting of Ryan Reynolds, who initially seems too young to play father George, makes a certain amount of sense. George has married into the brood consisting of mother Kathy (Melissa George) and her three kids, and his youth adds a level of awkwardness to his relationship with oldest son Billy (Jesse James), who already resents the new man in his mom’s life. Little daughter Chelsea (Chloe Grace Moretz), meanwhile, soon makes a new friend shortly after moving into the Amityville house: Jodie, who instead of the previous movie’s demonic pig is the spirit of a little girl (Isabel Conner) who was slaughtered with the rest of her family by her older brother Ronald DeFeo.
The DeFeo murders are the one indisputable horror associated with the place (though neither of the daughters was actually named Jodie), and their presentation in the movie’s opening scene is appropriately shocking. Ghostly Jodie, on the other hand, is just the latest in the long line of spooky kids who have so inundated the genre, it really ought to open a day care center or something. The bag of terror tricks employed by The Amityville Horror feels equally redundant; sudden shock cuts to scary faces and loud musical stingers are the order of the day, in place of eerie buildup or a sense of developing evil. The latter is especially disappointing as regards George’s possession by the house’s nasty mojo, as he begins transitioning from glad dad to bad dad too quickly for us to be caught up in his descent into madness. Reynolds tries hard to convey the personality change, but the problem is you can see him trying, and as of now, at least, he lacks the gravitas to make George’s slide into evil compelling.
There is one good gross-out bit involving a teenaged babysitter (who dresses and acts like she just stepped out of a Britney Spears video and disrupts the otherwise well-caught 1970s aura) and Jodie’s ghost, but it’s no accident that the only sequence with any honest tension is the most realistic one: Chelsea, under Jodie’s influence, teetering on the pinnacle of the house’s roof. These scenes beg the question of why an innocent victim like Jodie would become malefic in her spirit guise; perhaps she’s simply trying to scare the new family away from the haunted abode, but of course it’s a long time before Kathy takes the hint. Instead the movie proceeds to the inevitable crosscutting between Kathy finding out about the place’s gruesome past through research and George discovering it the hard way, leading to a climax in which, since this movie takes place in the mid-’70s and the characters haven’t seen any slasher flicks, they can just possibly be forgiven for fleeing upstairs from an ax-wielding madman instead of breaking a first-floor window to escape.
There is a school of thought that says it’s the bad and mediocre movies that should be remade instead of the classics, since it allows new filmmakers a chance to tease positive qualities out of the material that weren’t elicited before. I agree with that idea, and if The Amityville Horror had approached its story with a sense of historical context—or perhaps explored more deeply how a family might deal with living in a place where the last occupants met horrible ends—it could have added extra layers to the now-familiar tale. As it stands, the new film has the effect of making one wonder what was so special about this story in the first place.
