(2005) ***
In November 1974 Ronald Defoe murdered his entire family. Years later, George (Van Fucking Wilder) buys the house for a song. The family has a tough time adjusting to their dream house because the house is (pause for effect) HAUNTED! His young daughter befriends a ghost friend that encourages suicidal behavior. And George begins his descent into madness until he too considers butchering his family.
Based on a true story (yeah, whatever), Amityville '05 is like watching a greatest hits movie. It consists of 60% The Shining, 15% The 6th Sense, 15% original Amityville and 10% other. It's impossible to gauge what I would have thought of the remake had I not seen the various films that it "borrowed from". But I really don't have many bad things to say here. Van Wilder may have modeled his performance entirely on Jack Nicholson, but I dare say he kind of pulled it off. I was never impressed with the original anyway due to its absent body count, but one thing is certain - this version is much better. Begrudgingly recommended.
4 comments:
Yeah, the original film is really lame. In the end not a whoile lot happens. In this version there are at least a few good scares. I think the problem is that the source material was never that compelling to begin with. I've only seen one of the sequels and there are like 5 at this point.
The ending of this movie sucked by the way. What was the deal with the little ghost girl? It makes no sense. She was a ghost with no purpose...
I know, it's as if the director realized that there's just nothing too scary about the original story so he threw some stuff like that in to justify the "horror" part of the title. I think it should've been called, "The Amityville Box Social" or something like that.
That's often the problem with "based on a true story." True stories don't follow good narrative rhythm. One time I watched K-19 Widowmaker at my parents' house. They were watching the "making of" feature first, and I got all jazzed for some submarine combat. Instead you get to see a whole bunch of guys get fatally irradiated. Boooring.
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