Nothing to Fear: A Review of Andrew Douglas’ The Amityville Horror

by Scott Gage

05/16/2005

The Amityville Horror. Andrew Douglas, Director. 2005

You are here—at the box office of your favorite theater. You slide your trusty debit card to the disgruntled teenager on the other side of the glass, and you think fondly of the time (How long ago was it?) when a matinee cost $2.50. Inside the lobby, you purchase a small popcorn without butter, and even though you’re tempted to spend the extra quarter for a large, you buy a medium Dr. Pepper. You sit in the theater. The lights dim. You are here, and you are bound to be disappointed.

Enter Andrew Douglas’ remake of The Amityville Horror.

We all know the story. Convinced by “voices” that his family was demonic, Daniel Defeo shot his parents and siblings while they slept. One year later, George and Kathy Lutz (Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George) purchase the Defeo house despite their knowledge of the grisly crime that occurred there. They move in with Kathy’s three children, and they quickly learn the most important rule of becoming new homeowners: if you buy a house far below market value, it’s certain to be haunted. Over the next twenty-eight days, the family struggles to stay intact as the ghosts exert their influence. For example, Jodie Defeo (Isabel Conner) coaxes Chelsea Lutz (Chloe Grace Mertz) to skip atop the roof in order to reunite Chelsea with her deceased father. In the meantime, George transforms into an axe-wielding stepfather ala Jack Torrence, largely because of the movie’s inane tag line, “Katch ’em, kill ’em.” Pushed to her limit, Kathy seeks the help of Father Callaway (Philip Baker Hall), who finally reaches the only solution available to anyone living in a haunted house: GET OUT!

Like the vast majority of contemporary horror movies, The Amityville Horror fails to impress; it fails to rise above the formulaic tendencies of what Hollywood deems terrifying. As a result, it remains nondescript among its peers, and we’re left unaffected by what we see.  

Visual convolution is one way by which we remain unaffected. Contemporary horror movies overwhelm our sense of sight, and The Amityville Horror is no exception. In a failed attempt to frighten the audience, it bombards us with computer-animated images that appear in tick-tock fashion, often occurring after a build up of minimal suspense or tension (Sound familiar?). The break-neck montages that litter the end of the second act best exemplify my point. Director Andrew Douglas jolts us from one gory image to another. While this approach may work in some circumstances (a video on MTV, for example), it ultimately destroys the fictional illusion that we’re watching real things happening to real people. By destroying that illusion, Douglas reminds us that we’re watching a movie, nothing more. It’s as though he’s patting our heads while assuring us, “It’s just a movie. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” He’s right.

The Amityville Horror’s dependence on clichéd techniques is prevalent in the storytelling as well as the directing. For example, Scott Kosar makes use of stock response to create an emotional investment in his characters; we have an inherent tendency to sympathize with children whose father has passed away, with the mother who’s trying to care for those children, etc. Consequently, we are only able to identify with the characters in a superficial manner. Now, I do realize that horror has a history of using stock characters to create stock responses; what happens is always more important than the character to whom it happens. However, the redundancy is stifling. In addition, stock responses prevent us from having a true emotional investment in the movie’s characters, whose fates become as relevant as disposable teens in a slasher movie. We are, therefore, less horrified by what we see. Once again, there’s nothing to fear.

In all fairness, The Amityville Horror is not the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Those of you who have enjoyed the recent string of horror remakes should find yourselves entertained (It’s far better than Gus Van Sant’s Psycho Marcus Nispel's version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Nevertheless, The Amityville Horror is little more than further proof that horror movies have become as routine and mundane as entering a theater; we know what we’re going to see, and we know exactly how we’re going to see it. Perhaps, for a quarter more, a director will come along and give us the experience we’ve been missing.