Poster of The Amityville Haunting

The Amityville Haunting

Horror

Director: Geoff Meed

Release Date: December 13, 2011

Where to Watch

The Amityville Haunting is a found footage horror movie that tries to capitalize on the Paranormal Activity and The Amityville Horror franchises’ success with limited success. I found the characters’ too frustrating or annoying to care about them. What is the point of having cameras every where or a kid who records everything if you don’t look at the footage whenever something weird happens?!? Maybe it was the point that only a family that awful would be drawn to the house, but it was the weakest part of The Amityville Haunting. Also if someone is clearly going insane, would most of the family then huddle in the same room with that person? I liked the use of quick cuts to paranormal images, but because streaming movies makes it more difficult to freeze frame, I missed a few shots. It would be giving the creators of The Amityville Haunting too much credit to infer that there was some sort of commentary about how society values some people’s testimony more than others-men versus women and children, and the fear of female sexuality, but I think that it was largely unintentional to create suspense. Sometimes horror movies have people do stupid things just so horrible things can happen to them, and these characters were very retro. In the real world, someone would have called DCF on that family. If the characters were a bit more likable and believable, The Amityville Haunting would have been a decent film. If you do decide to watch it, use closed captioning

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