The Amityville Haunting Movie Review

The Amityville Haunting
                                                                 

The  Amityville Haunting is a horror movie directed by Geoff Meed and starred by Tyler Shamy, Devin Clark and Jon Kondelik. This movie is another of the ‘found footage’ style horror film which is getting too common to be interesting (or innovative) in recent times. This movie is released in 2011.

A scene from the movie The Amityville Haunting

Plot:

The movie tells the story of the house of the famous horror movie  ‘The Amityville Horror’ , after 30 years of the massacre. For those who doesn’t know that story, a man killed his family of 6 by being possessed by some kind of demon. Watch that movie if you are interested, that one is a good horror movie, at least, much better than this one.

The movie starts with the video footage of a few teens, who brakes in that house. Then they were attacked by something (it was not shown what attacked them). Some of them got killed and the others’ fate was not shown.

Next a family comes to that house. The husband (an ex-soldier) likes the house and decides to buy it, but knowing the house’s haunted past, the wife doesn’t agree with him at first. Finally the husband convinces her by telling about the cost and other things. They have 3 children where the mid one is a boy who tapes the whole story in his handycam.

One day, the husband finds a door open in the morning which was closed on the last night. Becoming suspicious, the husband installs security cam in the house. Security cam starts to pick unusual scenes. One night, the husband finds her daughter entering through that door with a boy. The husband throws the boy out of the house and he gets killed just outside the house by some strange thing. Oh, I forgot to mention, the agent who sold the house and a one of the persons who helped them to move in this house has already died in somewhat similar way.  These deaths upset the wife and she doesn’t like the house, but the husband doesn’t seem much disturbed by these.

Anyway, the son (the middle one) gets the phone of one of the teens who entered the house and got killed, but his father doesn’t seem to understand the risk either. Then more strange things starts to happen, like the little girl starts to talk with her imaginary friend, another man gets killed, camera picks up the ghost’s image and so on. All of them want to leave the house, except the husband. Finally he gets crazy and that when the ghost hits its final blow.

My reviews about this movie:

First of all, I didn’t like this movie at all.

We have seen a good number of these ‘found footage’ or ‘caught on tape unintentionally’ horror movies lately and now they are not only getting boring, but also getting irritating. Most irritating thing of all is, most of these movies are not well made, just like this one. “Paranormal Activity” is still a legend, where none of these can come near to that, even if they are made following it.

I’ve recently written a review of another movie of this kind, ‘Grave Encounters’ (you can read that here: Grave Encounters Review.). Just like that one, here in “The Amityville Haunting”, the director has totally failed to take the advantage of making a movie of this style. The ghost was seen on the screen several times, which has reduced the appeal of this movie.

A horror movie is supposed to be scary, but this movie has totally failed to scare me at all.

The plot is too simple to impress. The husband’s wish to stay in this house after all these seemed unrealistic.  The acting, dialogue and the make-up is not good enough. Make-up is specially bad for the ghost. The special effects are one of the very few good sides of this movie, although the effect of the ghost seemed pretty cheap. But I must say, when the ghost attacked (pulled) someone, that scene looked good.

There is nudity at the beginning of the movie, and overall, this one is not for children.

The cause of death of the husband seemed ridiculous. Watch the movie and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I have some confusion about some documents shown at the end of the movie. Are they original? If anyone can say anything about it, please share.

Finally, I’d say, it felt like I’ve wasted my time by watching this movie. If you are looking for a good horror movie, don’t go for it. 

If you are interested,

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2042447/

Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Haunting