PLOT: Based very loosely on true-life events in 1974-76, the story concerns the Lutz family, who move into an allegedly haunted house where six murders took place 13 months before.
The deadly slogan written in fridge magnets in The Amityville Horror still resonates: "Ketcham & Kill 'Em."
That pretty much tells you all you need to know about Andrew Douglas' new remake of the 1979 hit flick of the same name. Any pretence that the movie is actually "a true story" is submerged so deep in blood that the alleged truths buried in the horror are suffocated.
That is unless you actually believe in ghosts, haunted houses, bleeding walls and a little dead girl with a bullet hole in her head with just enough room for someone's finger. Surprisingly, the re-make is not that scary, even with that gross-out scene of the finger poking into the head wound.
Nor was the original, for that matter, as it made its slow build to the level of psychological terror that drove the Lutz family out of 112 Ocean Ave in Amityville, a Long Island town near New York City, after only 28 days of residence.
The original movie worked, to a point, by making us feel as if we were walking in James Brolin and Margot Kidder's shoes as they slowly went crazy in the house.
The new movie works, to a point, by turning the House of Horrors into a creep show that pushes the Lutz marriage into nightmare territory. This time, hapless George and Kathy are played by Ryan Reynolds (in a dramatic image shift from his silly comedy capers) and Melissa George (the new hottie on Alias).
There are plenty of bestial scenes. Besides the 1970s stuff -- the notorious DeFeo murders and the subsequent haunting of the Amityville house -- the new movie shows brutal scenes of torture, mutilation and murder in the 1700s.
This is where the Ketcham connection comes in. John Ketcham was an alleged witch banished from Salem. Some believe he brutalized native people on the site where the Amityville house, with its devil eyes, was later built. The re-make accepts that as fact and shows us in graphic detail what he might have done in a series of quick-edit flashback sequences which can only be described as truly horrifying.
Personally, I do not see why the movie's producers, who also generated the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, would want to remake The Amityville Horror. It serves no useful purpose. That said, there obviously is a market and, with the technological advances in filmmaking since 1979, it is possible to deliver the goods with more intensity.
The hi-tech polish of the remake glosses over the acting deficiencies. Reynolds is eye candy for the ladies, especially with his shirt off and his body built up for Blade Trinity, which he filmed before this. But his transition from loving stepdad and husband to psycho possessed guy is less than convincing. George is good, though, as the mom and wife.
Philip Baker Hall, playing the priest role Rod Steiger pumped full of sweaty angst in the original, is irrelevant because this version of the saga is only vaguely religious.
Overall, the new version of The Amityville Horror is effective but not inventive. But it will creep you out.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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