The Amityville ho-hum

Noel Vera

Perhaps the main reason why Jay Anson's book "The Amityville Horror"-
-plus the movie version it spawned, not long after--were hits was
because the public was fascinated (downright titillated, in fact) by
the possibility that the story was true. It's been some seven years
since "The Exorcist" made a big dent on the boxoffice, I suppose
people felt the need to be scared once more, and a true-life haunted-
house story was as good an excuse as any.

That's it, the only reason I can think of. Maybe if I dug a little
deeper I can find economic or socio-political causes, perhaps trace
trends in film horror through the late seventies--whatever; point
is, I can't imagine both book and movie making money because they
were actually any good. Anson's bestseller was basically a laundry
list of ghost-story clichés, arbitrarily put together; Stuart
Rosenberg's movie was somewhat more effective because instead of
relying on Anson's flat prose it puts everything, clear and obvious,
on the big screen. Call it hoary, call it clichéd, I still feel a
tingle when I see a crucifix hang upside down on a wall.

Andrew Douglas' remake (it's his first fiction feature) improves on
the original somewhat (the equivalent of saying if you give a moron
a baseball bat he will clonk himself on the head), although he does
get some of it wrong (the equivalent of saying the moron wasn't sure
where his head was, at first). Scott Kosar's script (he updated Tobe
Hooper's classic "Texas Chainsaw Massacre") is easily the best thing
in the picture, in that it fashions an emotional throughline which a
viewer can hold on to as he descends (there is no other more fitting
word) into the rather incoherent story--namely, George Lutz's
struggle to be accepted into the family by Kathy and her three kids
from a previous marriage. The picture features an altogether younger
cast, with Ryan Reynolds as George and delectable Melissa George as
Kathy (Margot Kidder already seemed halfway neurotic and James
Brolin almost entirely psychotic when they were introduced in the
original). The kids are somewhat more sharply particularized than in
the original: eerie young Chelsea (Chloe Moretz), weepy Michael
(Jimmy Bennett) and--best of all--sullen, pudgy Billy (Jesse James).
Kosar doesn't forget to give them amusing lines of dialogue to say
and Douglas doesn't force them too insistently on us--they're
attractive and believable as a family, and we readily warm up to
them, even care what ultimately happens to them.

As for the rest of the cast--Philip Baker Hall as the hapless
visiting priest comes to mind as a prime example of how a better
actor giving a more competent performance is not necessarily a good
thing. I remember Rod Steiger's unforgettable scenery-chewing, and
how the flies stubbornly stuck to his flesh--not, you feel, because
they were evil so much as because he seemed so moist and salty.
Hall's performance is considerably more low-key, but all the
understated acting in the world can't save him from the bit of
slapstick involving a ventilation grate and a cloud of digitally
animated flies--once he starts flying the movie's credibility goes
right out the window. The picture does provide us with Rachel
Nichols, who steps in out of nowhere playing a babysitter with bare
midriff (I'd love to know the phone number of the agency she works
for), lays herself on poor Billy's bed, and gleefully admits "Wow, I
suck at babysitting." Both kids and house don't know what to make of
her (except perhaps Billy, who in his hilariously clumsy way tries
to act cool and casual), so she ends up getting locked in a closet
and receiving your standard-issue digitally-animated scare…

It's a surprisingly engaging family picture, well-written and acted,
with quite a few pointedly funny moments--but this is "The
Amityville Horror" we're talking about, not "The Brady Bunch," and
Douglas' movie is weakest when it comes to horror. The original
picture may have been clunky and slow, but it showed us the scares
full-on, no apologies (and no digital effects); the new one adheres
to recent thinking in horror that probably goes like this: "If the
audience is too quick and smart to be scared by what takes place on
camera, we should try stay a jump ahead, and spring the scares on
them before they're ready." The result--cameras that snake along,
then leap forward in sudden bursts of speed; music-video shock cuts
showing choice bits of gore (too quickly for anything to really sink
in); innocuous objects or faces, digitally transformed into features
more malevolent--were tiresome when they were introduced way back
when and have become even less welcome now. Think what Hideo Nakata,
who worked on so-so material in "Ring Two" and is a skilled
craftsman in the art of the slow chill and steady thrill, might have
done with this project.

Anson's book and Rosenberg's movie came out at a time when the story
held (for a while, anyway) popular imagination captive; people
picked up a copy or walked into the theaters half-willing to believe
there really was an evil lurking out there in Long Island, New York.
You might say there is no better horror than what you bring into a
book or movie yourself, and the original "Amityville" capitalized on
that, clumsily but effectively. Twenty-five years later we've since
seen the truth-bending machinations of "The Blair Witch Project,"
not to mention heard questions about the Lutz's credibility (their
motive, apparently and unsurprisingly, was a need to be the center
of attention); the Amityville legend has since grown considerably
less potent--has, in fact been spoofed unmercifully in its various
uglier sequels and in the Wayans brothers' "Scary Movie" series,
among others. Maybe the other movie Douglas made--the one with all
the drama and family tensions--is the right one to make after all.
When all is said and done there IS a story to tell here, a fairly
good one; just wish Douglas and company had actually sat down and
told it.

(Originally printed in Businessworld, May 13, 2005)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)