Rented a movie on iTunes you know will be good: Amityville: The Awakening. Because we all need a little more Amityville Horror in our lives since, what? There are only about ten of these movies now? So many movies, the people who own the actual house in real life had to remodel it to keep the fans and ghost hunters away. Doesn’t stop Hollywood from building a new facade with evil window eyes and trying again.
No, this movie is NOT good. This movie is garbage. I kind of knew it when I rented it but sometimes a bad movie can be good. And they got a bunch of actors who deserve better to be in it so I had a little hope. And, no, they don’t save it and it makes me feel bad for them. Jennifer Jason-Leigh got dragged into this. Bella Thorne should be making better life choices. Jennifer Morrison (from Once Upon A Time), Cameron Monaghan (from Shameless) , and Kurtwood Smith (!) also slum it here.
Basic premise… a family with a bed-ridden teenager in a vegetative state move into the Amityville house. Bella Thorne plays a goth teen who quickly finds out that everyone at her new school knows about the house’s past. The ghosts or spirits or demons or jabberwocks possess the coma kid, he starts to wake up, frights allegedly occur.
There’s one pretty cool thing about the movie though. The history of the house in reality and in pop culture exist as a thing in this movie. When Thorne’s character is looking up the events of the original murders, a fellow student hands her a DVD of the original 1978 movie with James Brolin and Margot Kidder’s name on the cover. This movie exists in a world where the original movie (and the book it was based on) actually exist. And when they decide to watch the original in the actual Amityville house, the kid brings over the sequel AND the Ryan Reynolds remake (which they say sucks because all remakes suck).
If only ANYTHING else in this movie was clever like that or if they’d run with this idea more this could have been a cheeky, enjoyable little movie. But, alas, no.
And, out of curiosity, I looked up the Amityville series on Wikipedia. This is the 18th movie in the series… and here I thought there were about ten. I think I’ve seen six. I will not be a completionist. Do what the spooks say, “GET OUT!”
Score: 57