Wednesday, October 12, 2005

DVD Review: The Amityville Horror (2005)


With The Fog remake hitting theaters this friday, and with the scores of horror remakes looming on the horizon, it's no surprise that horror re-do's (or as they say in the biz--re-imaginings) are a new hot commodity. Michael Bay started the craze with the success of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and the new version of Dawn of the Dead only fanned those flames. Bay's next re-do is The Amityville Horror. While not a bad film, I feel that it didn't have the effect of the original. Now, I don't mean that the original is scarier by comparison, I mean that at the time the original was released, it had a much more of a horrific feel to it. If you watch the original today, it's almost laughable, but at the time...oohhh, spooky! And that's what you don't really get with the remake, the feel. It was well directed and acted with Ryan Reynolds giving a surprisingly good performance. By now, we all are familiar with the true story of the Lutz family, so I won't rehash it here. I still wonder how families that go through this kind of thing even contemplate staying in their house. The first time I see a malevonent spirit in my house, sayonara house! Still, I recommend the film for a rental, there's a few points in the movie that are tension filled and a few jumps here and there. Should have and could have been scarier though. I give it *** out of *****.

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