Amityville: The Awakening (2017) Review!!!

Synopsis – A single mother moves her three children into a haunted house, with a deadly bloody history.

My Take – I don’t get it, why do most horror franchises which started off exceptionally between the 70s & 80s, for example here the Amityville film series, refuse to die down. Based on author Jay Anson‘s 1977 novel, which chronicled the DeFeo Murders in the House on Ocean Ave, the original 1979 film was a major commercial success & went on to become one of the highest-grossing independent films of that time, and despite its initial negative critical response, the film in recent times is considered as a classic among its genre. However, following its lesser successful sequel/prequel, the series expectedly went downhill, until like most contemplates, the original too was given a remake treatment in 2005, with Ryan Reynolds in the lead. Despite being a commercial success, the general reception wasn’t kind enough to warrant yet another sequel. However, as the title ‘Amityville‘ isn’t licensed to any studio, small time producers ended up using this loophole to bring out a bunch of cheap knockoffs & amateur indies, connected to Amityville by name, in an effort to earn a quick buck. By doing so, this tripe essentially turned the Amityville title into mud. However, good news came to fans in the form of The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes, a found footage film announced back in 2011, with the backing of Dimension and The Weinstein Company, who were ready to produce a genuine studio venture unlike the straight to VHS/DVD films. However, with Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions (Get Out, Paranormal Activity) coming on board in 2014, the film eventually ended up being shot in the conventional form with a release date in January 2015.

Unfortunately, poor test screening responses led to certain re-shoots leading to a shift in date from April 2016 to January 2017, followed by June 2017. If that convoluted development, production, and distribution history isn’t enough of an indicator that the film was bad to say the least, here’s another sure-fire sign – eighteen executive producers are credited across five title cards ranging from one to seven names on each, indicating at least five separate parties invested in the product over the course of its creation. Expectedly, its removal from peak season was not surprising, but what stunned me was how last week it was finally yet unceremoniously released on to Google Play, where it can be streamed free of charge, despite scoring an international release in a few countries. Honestly, after having watched it I don’t really blame them, as this 18th entry in the Amityville Horror series, is nothing but a basic, by-the-numbers retread of the original film’s tropes and classic chiller clichés in the most outdated form. Sure, it is far from being the worst horror film I have seen all year (The Bye Bye Man takes that cake), it is just sad to see how the film, despite a known cast, is so poorly made that it hardly qualifies to be a big screen release. Ignoring all entries in the series including the original 1979 film Amityville Horror, the story follows Belle (Bella Thorne), a teenage girl, who along with her mother Joan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), her little sister Juliet (Mckenna Grace), and comatose brother James (Cameron Monaghan) moves into the infamous three story mansion on Ocean Ave in hopes of starting fresh. Despite being warned by her sister Candice (Jennifer Morrison), Joan decides to stay mainly due to the closeness of the house’s location to Dr. Milton (Kurtwood Smith), a neurological doctor who has been treating James for the past two years. Soon, freaky things start to occur around the house to the point where Belle isn’t sure what is real anymore, including James’ miraculous recovery. However once Belle finds out the history of the house, thanks to her new found friends at school, Marissa (Taylor Spreitler) and Terence (Thomas Mann), she confronts Joan, only to escalate the tensions between them. Worrying that history might repeat itself, Belle is left wondering where the real threat lies in the family, her possibly possessed brother or her mother who refuses to let anything stop her from making the family whole again. French director Franck Khalfoun, whose previous credits include the underground parking-garage thriller P2 (2007) and the uniquely first-person horror remake Maniac (2012), seemed like an ideal candidate to revive this franchise. But whatever vision he had in this film is largely buried somewhere. The end result that displayed on the big screen feels as if it was made by a group of studio executives, resulting in the direction being flat and uninspired. The plot, which was also written by Khalfoun himself, is plagued with half-baked characters and inconsistent pacing. Sure, there are a couple of decent ideas here; nothing that might really rescue a film such as this, but enough that you occasionally wish that director Khalfoun could have written a better script or at least taken the support of a better technician to work with. What’s interesting about the film is that it’s neither a remake nor a sequel as writer-director Franck Khalfoun‘s film takes place in the real world, where not only did Ronald DeFeo Jr murder his family in 1974 in their home at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, but author Jay Anson also wrote his 1977 book on the subject, The Amityville Horror, leading to a series of films beginning with the 1979 original, which in a scene the teens decide to watch on DVD inside the house itself.

The film is at its best when it doesn’t try to scare the audience, but perhaps make us weep. My favorite scenes were the ones in which the characters begin to form emotional bonds. Talking about characters, the most complex arcs belong to Belle and her mother, Joan, who have dramatic backstories and real motivations. The use of an atrophied, vegetative coma patient as a vessel for the house’s evil is a good idea, but James’s miraculous recovery and gradual corruption is occasionally undermined by some undermining makeup and visual effects. It’s just a shame that there’s nothing at all noteworthy about Khalfoun’s direction mainly as the film relies too much on cheap and random jump scares, which seemed to have been copy-pasted from every studio Hollywood-horror you can find, for example, the haunting resumes almost immediately with the family pet pawing at invisible objects on the floor, the staircase creaking on its own, and the uncomfortable appearances of swarms of flies. The film plays through all the standard horror film tropes we’ve seen countless times, specifically possession with a wee bit hints of incest thrown in there for good measure. Admittedly, the withered body of the comatose son does come off a bit creepy at times, especially when he’s seen moving around or hunkering in the shadows, but aside from that there’s nothing new or notable here as every horror cliché you can think of makes some sort of appearance as time goes on. There are little build-ups for suspense and the films re-cut from the original R to PG-13 is so obvious with all the abrupt editing, and off-camera killings makes the whole proceedings seem really odd. There are so many scenes under-utilized here, for example the scenes with Juliet could have been terrifying but instead she completely disappears from the film for a good portion of the running time, which leaves me thinking that the screenwriter-director didn’t know what to do with her while the main characters were in peril. James’ doctor in two brief scenes of little consequence & the same goes for Joan’s sister, Candice, whose only purpose in the plot is to strangely accompany each doctor visit before weirdly showing up to the house at 3:15am for a frightful off screen fate. The two friends that Belle makes at her new school are left hanging in the air after a certain a point and are underutilized. The premise of a possessed house seizing control of an ill teenager is lazily lifted from 2009’s The Haunting in Connecticut, and it’s probably no coincidence that writer Daniel Farrands was involved in both projects. There’s a notable lack of set-pieces, with very little bumps in the night for a film set in the world’s most evil-infested home. We get the occasional dream sequence, but the film is so awkwardly edited that the film’s dream sequences often appear to be left open-ended, segueing confusingly into the more grounded parts of the story. Employing some of the same techniques he used in the excellent Elijah Wood starrer Maniac (2012), director Khalfoun utilizes long tracking shots that canvas the entirety of the house, and despite the chilly mood and dreamlike atmosphere, there’s a silly ending that does exactly what was advertised followed by a tacked-on epilogue that spells things out, that is based on a true story. However, the performances are passable. Bella Thorne is, surprisingly, not wooden at all and she actually gets to show some of her acting skills in a few emotional moments. Thorne should be commended for giving the closest the film has to a committed performance, even though her character is one-note and never seems half as perturbed by the events around her as she should be. Jennifer Jason Leigh seems to be sleepwalking through the film with the irritated look of an actress who has been called back for one too many re-shoots. Cameron Monaghan (Shameless) is a brilliant actor, but here he appears quite late and is neither half scary nor threatening as his character Jerome in Gotham. McKenna Grace (Gifted) is charming and cute. Taylor Spreitler, Thomas Mann, Jennifer Morrison and Kurtwood Smith are wasted in small roles. On the whole, ‘Amityville: The Awakening’ is a bland, abrupt and utterly forgettable entry into a long-running franchise that is still riding on its clichéd slab of genre slope.