Hey folks, Harry here... this is one that I'm dying to get a peek at. The original AMITYVILLE HORROR is one of those late night all alone films that gives me the heebie jeebies. Maybe because my childhood home looked a bit like the Amityville House... or at least to my monkey brain at the time it did. Perhaps - it is because my father chopped wood real good and always has a grumpy look on his face like Brolin did. I actually think it has more to do with how fucked up the house gets Rod Steiger... how, just a phone call from someone inside the house to him, can give him sick fucked feelings driving him closer and closer to death. Then there was always the knowledge that... this really happened. This isn't just some bullshit scenario... Amityville... it's a truly real place, with truly real dead bodies as a result. I enjoyed this production team's TEXAS CHAINSAW remake - and I love that they're staying true to their period - even if Jessica Beil shouldn't have had a bra on in TCM. Nitpick. Here ya go...

Harry, I saw Amityville Horror Wednesday night at a test screening and here's my shot at a review.   

The screening was at the Pacific Beach Cities in El Segundo, where I see most movies and where I got invited to this one, along with what seemed like 5000 other people. I barely got in. Unlike a lot of movies that test screen there, I was motivated to actually go see this one. I have vague memories of the original- just that it scared the crap out of me and there was a pig in the window saying GET OUT!!  There was no pig in this movie.  But it scared the crap out of me.  Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead both definitely did not suck and this movie is easily as scary, if not more.  The scares are sort of like in The Ring- scary because you don’t know what’s gonna happen but you know it will be FUCKED UP!    

Moving on- Amityville Horror starts like the trailer… quick cuts of the DeFeo murders at the Amityville House.  DeFeo went crazy and wasted his whole family with a shotgun.  Then we get the title and that music. It’s still creepy.  It’s now one year after the murders and we meet the Lutz family- cute kids, hot wife, Ryan Reynolds with a beard and looking very cut (in Blade: Trinity mode). You just feel bad for this nice little family because they go looking for a house to make their lives better and find the Amityville house with the creepy eye windows.  It's big and out in the country and, by the way, A MAN KILLED HIS WHOLE FAMILY THERE!!!!  But they tell each other, there are not bad houses, only bad people.    

So they move into the house and we see it as their home movies-Ryan Reynolds, the hot wife (Melissa George from Alias), the little girl and boy and the older boy, Billy.  DAY ONE!  Everything’s just great.  Except that for Ryan Reynolds, the house is never warm enough.  And little Chelsea, the daughter, starts talking to an imaginary friend named Jody.  And while Ryan Reynolds is getting sex from his hot wife, a creepy little girl pops into the bedroom then disappears.  Yes, I jumped, no, I didn’t crap my pants. A few more other disturbing things happen and you can tell they're holding back because the shit hasn't truly hit yet.  But you know it will.   

So, they survive Day One.  But Ryan Reynolds keeps waking up at 3:15 in the morning (the hour DeFeo went through the house capping family members).  He's not the kids real dad and starts getting mean, yelling at them.  He’s fixated on the basement, trying to turn it into an office.  But the dog keeps digging at a rotting wall in the basement.  MAYBE BECAUSE THERE ARE DEAD PEOPLE IN THERE???  Just asking.  

Then we meet the pot-smoking ultrahot babysitter, who used to babysit for the DeFeo’s and scares the shit out of the kids when she tells them where everybody got shot.  When they get to the closet where the little girl was killed, Billy dares her to go in.  But once she’s in there, the door slams and locks, blood oozes down the walls.  She's pounding on the door, trying to get out, and then the fucked up little dead girl with a hole in her head (who happens to be named Jody)- grabs the babysitter’s finger and forces it into the entry wound on her head.  

It was at this point that I realized this movie is not going to let up. You don’t even want to know what happens to the family dog.  There are things in the walls and in the water around them, and voices telling certain characters to do things.  Ryan Reynolds gets darker, weirder, meaner.  He's getting sick and wakes up every night at 3:15 and every time he wakes up, you know some FUCKED UP SHIT will occur.  There’s an axe Ryan Reynolds uses to cut wood.  And there’s a shotgun in the house.  Then one day, he soaks into a hot bath (not a good idea)and bloody arms claw him under the water.  Something is seriously fucked in the house- and there's a story behind it, but the hot wife doesn't put it together until the end.   

She is is starting to realize how bad things have gotten at the Amityville house.  By this time it's DAY 28!!  DeFeo killed his family 28 days after he started hearing voices.  Ryan Reynolds has been hearing voices since Day One.   

At the end of the movie, I realized I hadn’t unclenched my jaw the whole time and it ached.  I might even have crapped my pants, but I won’t tell anybody if you won’t.  There’s a lot to like in this movie.  I can actually say IT WILL SCARE THE CRAP OUT OF YOU!  

This was a rough cut- it wasn’t finished.  A lot of shots looked washed out and there were a couple of parts that didn’t belong in the movie at all.  The audience clapped at certain points (I don’t want to spoil this), but at this one part after Ryan Reynold’s bath from hell, there’s a shot of the hot wife holding him like a baby- everybody actually laughed.  It was just strange.  I don’t want to give the ending away, but there was one other shot like that (BLOOD SHOWER!!!) that that didn’t make much sense.  

The acting was outstandng, especially the kid who played Billy.  He’s the one who knows that Ryan Reynolds is becoming dangerous before anyone else.  The hot wife and the kids all act like a family does.   That’s what stuck with me, because the stuff that happens to them you wouldn’t want to happen to people like that.   

I thought it was very well directed.  Let me put it this way- it’s fast, brutal and FUCKED UP!  My only suggestion to the director (I filled out one of those cards at the end of the screening and wrote this on it) would be to take out that bathtub shot and the that shot near the end.  And while I’m at it, how about full frontal nudity from the hot wife?  

Hope I didn’t totally fuck up this review.  Good luck with your leg. If you use it, call me IL DUCE!  

Vic