The Amityville Horror

100% full in 160 seat screen at 9:45 PM (similar to the TCM remake in my area). The showing beforehand also appeared to be extremly full when it let out.

Trailers (no reaction for anything):

Into The Blue
Stealth
War Of The Worlds
Kingdom Of Heaven
House Of Wax
The Skeleton Key
Mindhunters

Movie:

What do you get when you take one of the best fourty five minutes in modern horror history and mix it with one of the worst fourty five minutes in modern horror history? You get The Amityville Horror remake, my friends. This film is wildly inconsistent, and ultimately pretty damn disappointing by the time the closing credits roll on the screen. I guess we'll start with the good, which was the entire opening fourty five minutes, or as I like to call it - everything that happened before the priest character was introduced. The film begins with a literal bang, in one of the best opening sequences i've seen in a film in quite some time. The films really builds off that opening surge of momentum. Everything is just hitting on all cylinders. The character development of the Lutz family is extremely good for a horror film, the acting by all involved (even Reynolds) is damn good, the direction is top of the line, and there are some pant-shittingly scary set peices that happen to include heapin' helpins of the red stuff (the bathroom scene with the kid brushing his teeth and the closet scene with the babysitter are two stand outs that will have you up later than you want to be at night). Then, all of the sudden, everything just stops. It's quite shocking how the film just falls completely off the tracks once the character of the priest is introduced. You can really tell that the filmmakers tried way too hard to get the film extremely scary too early and just plain ol' ran out of ideas to cap the film off with. A golden rule I always like to use with horror films is, once you have to rely on bugs to be scary for you, you've really lost your way. And that ending. Oh, god - that ending! I was stuck asking myself when the film stopped being a horror film and turned into one of "thrillers" you see so often on the Lifetime network. Here's the checklist:

Crazy husband chasing helpess wife and kids all over the house (including highly improbable roof sequence) - CHECK
Amazingly adept 12 year old saves the day numerous times - CHECK
Give us a taste of the ending everybody wants to see and rip it away with the "it was all just a dream/halucination" cliche - CHECK

With that said, there were some nice things about the ending. The Ketcham character was very interesting, and the atrocities commited to the Native Americans were deeply disturbing and provided some horrific imagery that Clive Barker would have been proud of, but it all wasn't enough to save the ending.

I really wanted to like this movie. Nay - I wanted to love this movie, and the most frustrating thing about it is the first fourty five minutes completely delivered on everything that I was hoping for and them some. Andrew Douglas seems like an incredibly gifted filmmaker, and he was on the verge of delivering one of the best modern horror films around. He just had too many great ideas too quickly, and the film collapsed in on itself. I give The Amityville Horror a C+.

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Dude, you really wanted to like it, you really wanted to love it which indicates to me you didn't like this, but still gave it a "C+"??? That's almost above average.. You sure you didn't go into this with super high expectations due to me hyping this up forcing you to give it this sort of odd grade?? If you didn't like it or even come close to loving it, why would you give it a grade above all things a "C+"?? Interesting..

can you not accept that some people may not love this BKB?

bkb sounds like one of those extremist people.Either you like what i like or your wrong!

AMITYVILLE HORROR

Where: My location
When: 4-16-05 @ 2020
Size/Occupancy: 400+ / less than 50 % which was very disappointing, I thought it'd be sold out !

Trailers:

Kingdom of Heaven : Probably the dumbest trailer for this film I've seen. It's the one with music that doesn't match the movie i.e. Rock music....wth??
Skeleton Key : Still the good one that is out, very creepy very nice
House of Wax : Still the good one that is out, ditto
Into the Blue? : Starring Alba and Walker, nice bodies boring film
et others I forget

The film: I enjoyed AH very much. I liked the quick presentation of the original story from which it's based. That was very graphic and disturbing. I was surprised this was supposed to have taken place just a yr after the murders. I thought all the actors did a nice job although the girl "chelsea" got on my nerves a lot. If anyone needed psychiatric aid more than the husband it was her. Btw, I'm getting tired of little children being in horror films and always having some special connection with the dead. The progression of the husband's sanity was nice and was really making me hate the character which is always a plus when a film can do that for me. The historical reference to the Ketchum history was interesting as well. I also did get kind of tired seeing Jody, I don't think I'll be able to look at children with bullet holes in their head for at least a couple weeks. In the end, I was very pleased with the film. It was on par with TCM in terms of fright moments and plot movement which is quick and I like that. One thing that would have helped the experience would have been a sold out theatre but for some crazy reason this show wasn't sold out even though it was Saturday Night and during a Prime Round showing.

Grade : B+

I'm beginning to wonder if the R-Rating really did play a part in it not being sold out??? I notice the 3 times I saw this, it was mostly an adult crowd with no screaming kids or cell phones going off and talking left and right, which is sort of a good thing because it's the those things that get on my nerves when paying $$$ to see a movie.. Hmmm.. On the otherhand, I couldn't imagine this movie being rated PG-13.. No way with the scenes of torture and oodles and oodles of blood which are not present in both the RING and The Grudge..

Amityville had "oodles of blood"? Maybe I'm just forgetting the two screenings I attended, but the closest it ever seemed to get was the Hellraiser-lite sequence in the torture room. And even that wasn't particularly disgusting.

Ooooh, i'm seeing AMITYVILLE next friday, can't wait.

The HOUSE OF WAX trailer seems to be getting shown with AH alot.

This is good news....thats it been attached to CONSTANTINE, BE COOL, CURSED and now shown with RING TWO and AMITYVILLE.

Yay

When I think of bad PG-13 horror, White Noise comes to my head.