Source-DVRed off one of the movie channels
7 years ago the gang at The Asylum,best known for the popular Sharknado franchise,went where many indy film studios have been. They made an unofficial entry in the long running Amityville series of films. Some of the Asylums films can be fun. With a few of them being actually pretty good. And most horror fans know what to expect from a horror film from The Asylum. You usually get cheesy CGI effects work. At least a few cameos from B,or lower,level celebs. Plus the Asylum tries to get at least one main cast member who is a name. Sure it might be someone like Vanessa "I peaked with Weird Science the TV show" Angel. Or Jerrry O'Connell's brother. This time they got no one. Looking thru the cast at IMDB most of them haven't done jacksquat before or after this film.
It seems that this film was made to ride on the coattails of a film that never got made.At the 2011 Cannes film festival the Weinsteins announced an upcoming found footage Amityville film,The Amityville Horror the Lost Tapes. This film was never made and kinda morphed into 2014s,released finally in 2017 and reviewed here as on the first day of October 2018,Amityville:The Awakening. The Asylum,before Sharknado became a hit,was best known for making so called Mockbusters. Say a new Transformers movie was hitting theaters. The Asylum would make Transmorphers,with a cover and poster that at a quick glance looks like the Transformers poster. Then either a week before ,the week of,or the week after Transformers hit theaters,Transmorphers would hit DVD and air as a SyFy Channel original. Banking on two types of people to watch/rent/buy the film. The first type isn't the brightest and looks at the cover fast and thinks they have just found a movie that is still in theaters ,or in some cases not in theaters yet,for rent. The second type is the film fan that loves watching a shitty movie with friends and cracking jokes about it.
The film feels like whoever wrote the script had not even seen the original Amityville Horror. And besides the name and a ghost named ,in the credits only,after Ronald Defeo jr,there is no connection to the Amityville franchise.What we end up with is a badly done low budget rip off of the Paranormal Activity series of films.
When watching this movie I keep having a nagging feeling I had seen it before. But was wondering where I had seen it. Then it clicked. A light bulb went off over my head and I figured it out. Back in 2011 my cousin had gotten a new TV.It was a smart TV. And she wanted to watch a horror movie using her new subscription to Netflix. Like me she had seen a few of the earlier films in the Amityville franchise. We started the film with her,her husband and two kids watching it with me. After 20 minutes both the kids were bored and wanted to go play video games. At about the 40 minute mark her husband go on his phone and started messing around with his fantasy football team. Her and I were the only ones to really watch it to the end.
Now having seen it two times I can say this isn't the worst Amityville film I have seen. That would be Amityville Exorcism. Which I reviewed earlier this month. But Amityville Haunting is barely better than Amityville Exorcism.
The Amityville Haunting gets a D-.