The Amityville Horror (1979)
A classic of the horror genre and one of the first modern haunted house films.
Laura’s Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
Plot: Newlyweds George and Kathy Lutz move into a house in New York with Kathy’s small children. Multiple murders occured in the house before the Lutzes moved in and now supernatural terrors start happening in the home.
Opinion: The most horrifying thing to me is that they got that beautiful house for only $80,000 and Kathy jokes that it might as well be $800,000, which is what it probably would be today. Millennial frustrations aside, many do speculate that the film is a metaphor for the financial difficulties and anxieties of home ownership.
The pace of this film was incredibly slow and I was pretty bored in the middle. The ending is at least tense and frightening, but it takes most of the 1 hour and 59 minute run time to get there. There’s also never really an explanation for what’s going on, other than the murders that happened a year earlier and a shady history of what used to be on the land.
One of the recurring horrors is flies? Just a lot of flies and bad vibes. Probably the scariest thing is the daughter, Amy. She has a creepy doll, an opinionated imaginary friend, and says horrifying stuff like “Jody doesn’t like George.” Amy is the worst, but she’s hardly a major character. The other kids are barely featured and add nothing to the plot. James Brolin and Margot Kidder both play their characters well, with Brolin really carrying the film.
The film was one of the most successful films produced by an independent studio at the time. The New England autumn scenery is amazing in this and there’s a couple spooky scenes. Yet I’m surprised this lackluster haunted house movie could spawn a whole franchise of sequels.
Комментарии