Amityville: The Awakening - 13 Nerdy Nights of Horror - Day 8

            With the success of James Wan’s “The Conjuring” back in 2013, Warner Bros. took this as a sign to get a horror franchise going, by adapting all of the Warren cases into feature films, dubbing it “The Conjuring Universe.” Because everything needs to be a universe nowadays. So far, with both “The Conjuring” and “Annabelle” movies, the series has had relatively good success at the box office, and with the exception of “Annabelle,” the two “Conjuring” movies and “Annabelle: Creation” turned out pretty damn good. Some even praise them as some of the better horror films to come out as of late.

            It also highlights upon one of their most famous cases, and one that was adapted into a film franchise back in the late 70’s, “The Amityville Horror.” The story of Amityville is that of a man who ended up shooting six of his family members, and how the ghosts of that house begin to torment the next family that lived there. Despite the whole paranormal thing being a hoax, it still remains one of the most horrifying tales to think about. And for something as low budget at the time, it really added to this grounded feel to it, which got to a lot of people at the time, who admitted to being through similar scenarios.

The original still stands as a classic, and one of the most memorable roles for both James Brolin and Margot Kidder. Today, it may not be much, but at the time it really got to you. The rest of the film series, I didn’t really bother with. Aside from the 2005 Ryan Reynolds remake from Platinum Dunes, I never really kept up with the rest of the series. None of the theatrical sequels they did, not the made for tv movies, none of the direct-to-video releases, nothing. I just felt like aside from the first film and the remake, there really wasn’t much to go into about with it. That is until the past few years.

Back at the turn of the decade, Dimension and Blumhouse were in talks of making a brand new “Amityville” movie, to possibly cash in on the found footage craze at the time. However, that fell through when Franck Khalfoun got on board, and decided to go back to the basics of the series, and got it ready to show for fans to witness…problem was, the film couldn’t find a way to theatres for a good while. When the film got going into production, it was set to release back in January of 2015. It had distributing troubles, companies had to sell the film around, test screenings were negative, reshoots had to be done, trailers popped up at one point then vanished, it was a mess. Considering how much I was curious to find out what about this film was worth storing away to try and release, I decide to check it out, prepared for its theatrical release on the 27^th, hoping it comes to Las Vegas…and then I found out on October 8th, they dumped the film on Google Play for free, until its blu ray release this November…I’m not kidding, look it up if you don’t believe me.

So now that it was finally released to the public, was “Amityville: The Awakening” worth the wait? Well, let me put it to you like this: Imagine “Texas Chainsaw 3D,” a direct sequel to the original 1970’s movie, that completely ignores any other film in the franchise; now try mixing it in with “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2,” and you have a masterpiece of shit. This is one of the most indecisive movies that I have ever seen, because it doesn’t know what it’s trying to be. It claims that this is a direct sequel to the Amityville series, but it’s not; even if they try to recreate the ending style of the first film, it doesn’t work because it was proven a hoax, so there’s no tension behind it, thus no reason to make this movie. Hollywood needs to stop doing this! At times it wants to be an “Amityville” movie, with a sick family member getting better via possession; then it goes into a “Scream” wannabe at school, with the dorky friends; then it wants to be this weird melodrama about how Mommy cares more about the sick boy twin then ever acknowledging the daughter twin’s existence. Oh, and there’s a little sister, played by McKenna Grace from “Gifted,” in the movie too. Because, why the fuck not, right? This movie is hitting almost every one of the horror clichés that we’ve established since the 1960’s, so why not throw in a little girl to the movie? I can just imagine how that process went, like the casting director was like Jake from “The Blues Brothers” in the restaurant scene.

Writing is cliché, but what about our cast and characters? Honestly, some of them are obviously trying to make this work, especially Bella Thorne and Jennifer Jason Leigh as the mother and oldest daughter. You get that they have a rough history that involves the son, as if she was the one who paralyzed him by accident, and the scenes involving them about what to do with him or how they’re going to mend their relationship back together, has a lot of potential that could easily work for a horror film like this…I just wish that it didn’t have to be an attempt at reviving the “Amityville” franchise. Aside from them and McKenna Grace, the rest of the acting is just abysmal to sit through; even with actors like up-and-comers like Thomas Mann or veteran actors like Kurtwood Smith, these are really uninteresting characters to watch. As for the sick son, there really isn’t much to say about him; he’s just a corpse for a demon of the house to possess. Oh great, check off the sick person being possessed off the cliché list.

The direction of this film also feels really uninspired, as you got jumpscares that don’t amount to anything, false scares from illusions, the whole tense moment of whether or not the child will be shot…guys, I’m grasping at what I can with this film, but it’s giving me nothing. A similar event like this, where I saw a film that gave me nothing, and that was “Phoenix Forgotten.” It was a horrible movie, because it had nothing of substance worth talking about; it’s that dreadfully boring. “Amityville: The Awakening” isn’t as bad as “Phoenix Forgotten,” but it’s still guilty of being a colossal bore to sit through.

Overall, don’t let curiosity get to you with “Amityville: The Awakening,” even if a theatre does release it near you. Aside from our three main actresses, the film suffers from really stock writing that even middle schoolers would probably get away with doing. The acting is dull, the setting is dull, the direction is dull…why am I even still talking about this?

Rating: 2/10