THE AMITYVILLE TERROR (2016)

Studio:       Uncork’d Entertainment
Director:    Michael Angelo
Writer:       Amanda Barton
Producer:  Philip Day, Justin Jones, Zeus Zamani
Stars:     Nicole Tompkins, Kaiwi Lyman, Kim Nielsen, Amanda Barton, Trevor Stines, Christy St. John, Tonya Kay, Bobby Emprechtinger, Lai Ling, Cher Hubsher, Priscilla Emprechtinger

Review Score:

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Summary:

A troubled family unknowingly moves into a cursed Amityville home with a dark connection to local residents.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Along with their teenage daughter Hailey, Jessica and Todd Jacobsen move in with Todd’s troubled sister Shae after Shae unknowingly purchases a haunted house in Amityville from property manager Delilah McAllister.

While riding her dirt bike, Hailey meets local teen Brett and the two of them gradually develop a romance. Flanked by her friends Sally and Claire, classmate Theresa takes an immediate disliking to Hailey and begins bullying her.

Strange discoveries in the house and encounters throughout the neighborhood culminate when Shae has an experience in the bathtub during which she feels her flesh burning. The incident turns out to be a hallucination, but Shae’s behavior continues growing stranger afterward.

When Hailey mentions her aunt’s outburst to Brett, Brett tells her that a little boy who used to live in the house, Jimmy Oberest, reportedly poured acid in the tub and drowned his baby sister before killing his parents.

Todd’s mechanic boss Mike comes to the house to check on Shae, whom he used to date in college, and sees her hovering behind Jessica while brandishing a scalpel. Mike goes to see Delilah and pleads with her to spare Shae. Delilah refuses. Mike later dies when an entranced Todd inadvertently starts a fire at the auto shop. At the same time back at the house, Jessica cuts herself repeatedly and ends up covered in blood while working in the garden.

At the bar following Mike’s death, Delilah seduces Todd. Todd comes home and is then strangely seduced by his wife, who turns out to be Shae in a supernatural disguise.

Brett introduces Hailey to his psychic friend Jenny for help. Jenny reluctantly comes to the house to cleanse a safe place for Hailey, but is supernaturally attacked and thrown out a second floor window.

Hailey finds her aunt painting with a scalpel from a bag belonging to Dr. Willis R. Cranston. Hailey researches the doctor and discovers that he disappeared in 2004. Hailey tracks down Willis’ brother David, who tells Hailey that his brother purchased the house from Delilah McAllister.

Hailey breaks into Delilah’s home and finds a file cabinet full of folders identifying all of the families who rented the Amityville property and subsequently disappeared, including the Jacobsens. Delilah catches Hailey rifling through the drawers. Hailey flees to the police station and calls her father with a warning to get Jessica and Shae out of the house.

Hailey calls Brett about Delilah. Brett reveals that the Oberest Family practiced black magic in the house and opened a portal to Hell. He also tells her that Delilah is actually Jimmy Oberest’s sister who was not home on the night when Jimmy murdered the rest of their family. The phone call is cut short when Hailey sees two men transporting Jenny’s body and she decides to follow.

Fully possessed, Shae attacks Jessica inside the house. Meanwhile, Theresa and her two friends confront Brett about trying to help Hailey and getting Jenny involved.

Hailey spies the two men burying Jenny’s body in a makeshift graveyard. She also notices that a marker is reserved with the Jacobsen name on it. Theresa and her friends arrive to confront Hailey. Theresa reveals that the townspeople must feed the house or else the evil spirit will come for them.

Hailey uses her crossbow to kill one of Theresa’s friends while Theresa kills the other for disloyalty. Theresa then reveals that she decapitated Brett. Theresa and Hailey fight until Hailey stabs Theresa through her heart.

Hailey returns to the house and finds her parents brutally butchered. Shae attacks. After the two of them fight, Hailey fires a crossbow bolt into Shae’s forehead. Shae combusts and Hailey escapes the house.

In an epilogue, Delilah shows the house to the family seen dying horribly in the prologue scene.

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Review:

It rarely fails.  Whenever word breaks on another low-grade Amityville project, you can count on confused consumers to comment about how far off the rails the film series has gone since its 1979 debut.

What they have yet to realize, although more and more learn this with each disappointing entry, is that there isn’t exactly a canonical Amityville series to speak of.  “The Amityville Horror” is a specific trademark, and Hollywood studio productions genuinely tied to this title can be counted as related, certainly those 1980s sequels anyway.  But being the name of a city, anyone has free reign to plug “Amityville” without the “Horror” into whatever s/he wants and voila, a seemingly “official” Amityville movie when there is virtually no such thing.

Indie horror producers/distributors/filmmakers count on this name recognition and that naivety to combine for an ill-informed iTunes rental or blind DVD purchase.  That’s why the fright film market is flooded with almost as many movies bearing the word “Amityville” as it is “Paranormal.”

Speaking for myself, I don’t have being uninformed as an excuse.  I’ve long known about this tired tactic and yet here I am still willingly walking into minimal effort movies like “The Amityville Terror” as though I don’t know any better, even though I do.  Shame on me.

Amityville is of course located in Long Island, New York.  So pay no attention to the palm trees and mountains in the background of “The Amityville Terror” as it was clearly shot in California.  Or possibly one state over since an unmarked police car visibly sports a Nevada license plate.

The film also takes place in some bizarro reality where no one seems to know what Amityville is infamous for.  The name apparently carries as much weight as Ypsilanti or Cleveland as far as cities with sinister connotations go.

A traditional story summary is unnecessary.  I’ll just list an assortment of included clichés and if you’ve seen at least one haunted house horror movie before, you’ll have no problem figuring out how it all fits together:

Troubled family looking for a fresh start unknowingly moves into a cursed home.  Creepy child’s doll.  Creepy music box.  Odd little local girl cryptically references an entity in the house.  Woken suddenly from a nightmare.  Nearly drowning in a bathtub.  Bitchy bad girl doesn’t like the outsider new girl starting a romance with her good guy boyfriend.  Conspiratorial townspeople suddenly hush up and look down whenever the new neighbors casually mention which house they’ve moved into.  Struggling husband supernaturally seduced.  Unsolved mysteries dating back decades.  Google search montages of someone doing online research.  Paranormal activity.  Possession.  A buxom landlord practically wearing a negligee to pick up the rent check.

That last one may be somewhat atypical, but you get the picture.  About the only thing missing is a killer clown to complete the smorgasbord of routine chiller conventions.

Rife with dysfunctional family melodrama and teen soap subplots, “The Amityville Terror” is the kind of by-the-book supernatural thriller where if it were actually based on true events, it might fit as an average Tuesday night MOW on Lifetime.  The movie is more technically competent than the lowest of the low Amityville cash-ins like “The Amityville Asylum” (review here), “The Amityville Haunting” (review here), or “The Amityville Theater” (review here), at any rate.

However, it’s hard to regard “The Amityville Terror” as even the mediocre movie it sets out to be because it stops living up to its own initial standards of what counts for passable entertainment value.  The set-up may induce sleepiness, but at least it follows a formula, never mind how rote that formula may be.  Then the film seemingly loses all remaining respect for itself by degrading into a sloppily edited last act tying threads together in ridiculously rushed fashion.

Scenes stop making sense.  Substories come to hurried resolutions.  Continuity becomes careless.  And it’s a tie as to which ugly attempt at fire special effects is worse: the laughable layer of CGI flames standing in for an unaffordable explosion, or the orange light bulb flickering on a dimmer switch meant to simulate a burning living room.

Recognizable from other productions, several actresses in particular attempt to make lemonade out of their sour lemon roles.  But basic characterizations and hurried, seemingly single-take setups don’t afford wiggle room to wash away the warts.  “The Amityville Terror” is what you get when limited time, a limited budget, and limited enthusiasm come together to pinch out an unoriginal horror film: something partly functional, yet entirely forgettable.

Review Score:  30

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