It's no wonder George Lutz is mad. The man who inspired the best-selling book and subsequent hit movie, The Amityville Horror, in the late 1970s is steamed at the producers of the new Amityville remake, and after watching the film, it's not hard to see why. Whether you believe Lutz's account of the mysterious events that allegedly befell him and his family during the 28 days they lived in the infamous house in Amityville, New York, it's obvious that the new film, from the producers and writer of 2003's Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, distorts the story to the extent that George Lutz comes off really poorly.
Lutz has a competing film project in the works, so it's not unreasonable to question his motives for speaking out against the new movie—and as an independent entity, it should be judged on its own terms. But the filmmakers invite comparison to Lutz's story from the get-go, as the first thing you see is a title card boasting "Based on a True Story," and as with the Chainsaw redux, the film begins with fake news footage describing grisly murders.
In this case, the murders were of the DeFeo family, who in 1974, were killed in their sleep. The parents and four children were murdered by the eldest son, who claimed that voices told him to do it. A year later, George Lutz, his wife Kathy, and Kathy's three children moved into the DeFeo house, only to move out less than a month later, never returning to claim their possessions.
These are the facts. But writer Scott Kosar and first-time feature director Andrew Douglas take them less as gospel than as a vague jumping-off point, and that's undoubtedly what has the real George Lutz miffed. This film is complete fiction; it just happens to have characters named after real people. In the movie, George (Ryan Reynolds) and Kathy (Melissa George) move in, along with Kathy's two sons and daughter. Almost immediately, spooky things start happening, including apparitions of the dead DeFeos popping up all over the place, strange voices coming from the walls and dead little Jodie DeFeo, looking like the creepy girl from The Ring, befriending the daughter, Chelsea (Chloe Grace Moretz).
In Stuart Rosenberg's 1979 original (which spawned seven sequels), the horrors that befell the Lutzes were almost banal: a major set piece involved Kathy's brother losing a wad of cash somewhere in the house. Clearly that's not enough for the producers of the remake, who include hack director extraordinaire Michael Bay. They've taken the basic story of the original film and added tons of gore and more swear words, and seem to think that this (along with the bogus "based on a true story" mystique) is enough to keep people's interest. Of course, more doesn't necessarily equal better, and like the Chainsaw remake, Amityville is a lot of bluster with little finesse.
At least it's brisk and sometimes exciting bluster, and at barely 90 minutes, it gets in, throws around a couple of scares and gets out before boring the audience the way Rosenberg's version did. Douglas' film isn't remotely believable, but it's certainly scarier than the original, even if most of those scares are courtesy of cheap jump moments. Only a sequence with Chelsea balanced precariously on the house's roof provides genuine, non-gimmicky suspense.
Reynolds, who's known more for goofy comedies, starts out with his familiar persona, but when George, influenced by the house, slips into psychopath mode, Reynolds steps up and makes for a credible, if not exceptional, villain.
Moretz and Jesse James and Jimmy Bennett as the brothers are given much more to do than in the original film, and make for sympathetic targets when Dad goes off the deep end (possibly what ticked the real Lutz off), but Melissa George is bland and flat as Kathy, her Australian accent showing through at inopportune moments. Ultimately, the film never makes a case for its own existence, merely adequately marking time until the next inevitable (and pointless) horror remake comes along.