One of the most hilarious scenes in Andrew Douglas' remake of 1979's "The Amityville Horror" is when the priest who took it upon himself to bless the haunted house of Amityville is accosted by flies and gets the hell out of there.
In "The Exorcist," Father Dyer is totally down with giving his life to get the devil out of that kid. In this horror flick, the man of the cloth just peaces out when things get rough, sending the clear message that not even Jesus can save "The Amityville Horror."
Rife with obtuse gender roles, cultural biases and really unnecessary grisliness, "The Amityville Horror" attempts to retell the spookiness of this massive haunted house that makes people go on killing sprees.
The movie is loosely based on the real events of the Long Island residence where the DeFeo family was gruesomely murdered. A year later, the Lutz family moves in, and according to this cinematic retelling, the house provokes father George Lutz (Ryan Reynolds) to attempt to kill his family as well.
The overwhelming reinforcement of this remake is that it is inherently male to be affected by a haunted house. George spends all of his time down in the basement hearing voices, but even though his wife, Kathy (Melissa George), lives in the house and experiences much of the same weird stuff as George, she's completely fine. When George starts acting like a jerk and messing with the kids, she rolls over and takes it. The movie is even complete with scenes of men chopping wood outdoors while the mother and daughter watch placidly from the kitchen.
Even when she learns, thanks to that ubiquitous library microfiche scene, that the house is where members of an American Indian tribe were tortured, killed and buried by a nutty preacher, Kathy returns to the house to make sure her psychopathic husband gets out okay. When he's apparently "all better," she's totally cool with the fact that he tried to chop up her oldest son with an axe! "Don't worry guys, it was just the house's fault! Let's be a family again!"
Furthermore, the whole "torturing American Indians made this house haunted" plot twist basically plays up the oldest horror movie clich? in the book. When Kathy goes to the priest to ask about this whole ordeal, he explains all of the cruel stuff that went down at her house. "On my land!" she exclaims upon this realization.
Uh, no. This would actually be American Indian land. If it's not smallpox or alcohol or the Dawes Severalty Act, it's torturing a bunch of them on Long Island lakefront property. No wonder it's haunted.
The movie also employs some pretty baffling special effects. To make up for the repetitive and boring dialogue ("What's wrong with you people?" George asks of his family at least 40 times), director Douglas throws in some gnarly scenes of flesh and blood spillage that were definitely not part of the original. Rather than being appropriately shocking, these scenes just come off as out of place. Save it for "Saw 2."
There are a few redeeming aspects of "The Amityville Horror." First, viewers get to applaud Alanis Morrissette for going from Dave "Cut it Out" Coulier to Ryan "I should have spent more of this movie topless" Reynolds. Secondly, the scenes with the baby-sitter blatantly hitting on a 12-year-old and then declaring, "I suck at baby-sitting!" are incredible. Lastly, at least the convoluted bastardization of the "true story" the movie is based on is pretty hilarious, but unfortunately it's not scary in the slightest.
