The Amityville Haunting

Plot synopsis:
In June 2008, the Benson family moves into 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, due to issues with their teenage daughter, Lori. Despite the disturbing history of the house where Ronald DeFeo, Jr. shot and killed six members of his family in 1974, the Bensons agree to purchase the house. Upon their decision, they walk outside to find their realtor dead in their driveway. The following day, Tyler Benson witnesses one of the movers falling down the stairs, which kills him instantly. The family continues to live in the house, despite the tension growing from the unexplainable events occurring. From doors opening, to a mysterious phone appearing in the kitchen, paranormal phenomena continue to bother Tyler, while his parents refuse to believe that there is anything happening beyond their own explanation. Douglas Benson takes matters into his own hands when he decides to install CCTV cameras in the house. Young Melanie Benson attracts the attention of the family when she starts talking to her "imaginary friend" John Matthew, which leads Douglas to wonder if Lori or Tyler told Melanie about the history of the house. As the family grows more fearful of the unexplainable deaths of a close family friend and a neighbor boy who was attracted to Lori, Douglas starts to break down, using religious paraphernalia to rid the house of any spirits that reside within the house. After one month within the house, Lori, Virginia, Douglas, and Tyler Benson all die in various manners. Melanie Benson is the only survivor, as she says that she has plans to stay in the house forever, along with John Matthew. The autopsy reports shown at the end of the film place emphasis on the fact that each victim was under extreme stress at the time of their death.

Tags: murder

Review:
Oh wait, except for it didn't working on any level.The movie was an endless stream of really bad camera work, interrupted by this blackening-out screen and static sound whenever the entity was about to make something happen or make an appearance.
I got thoroughly frustrated by the crappy camera work and the static sounds just added fuel to the fire called irritation with the movie."Amityville Haunting" is one of the most uneventful and frightfully boring movies I had ever had to sit through.
Actual found footage that documents the horrifying experience of a family that moved into the infamous Amityville haunted house.Opening with words in "1974" blah, blah "Defoe murdered his family", blah,"Lutz" blah, "32 years later", blah blah "what you're about to see is real".
Both female leads are effective enough, it's not an awful film, the acting is at times naturalistic but the issue is that this style of horror has already been done and done better with more imagination.
There are a few moments in the closing scenes where director Geoff Meed slightly redeems the film but it's too little too late.The problem with The Amityville Haunting is that it perpetrates to be real and pushes the fact right to the end but nothing feels credible.
The actual film was a parody of paranormal activity and the Amityville Horror, although it is the 'same' house it is now in the suburbs rather than countryside...
They try to add narrative with a child and a video camera who feels it necessary to annoy everyone in the film with the camcorder and me with his recap of each bad 'horror' segment.
Not this kid, as he says things are 'really creepy'- Yes Tyler (or whatever generic name you have) it is actually if I was you I'd be like maybe we shouldn't be here rather than worry about your future career in documentaries.Although, he may get a job in one as he can't act.This films acting I have got to say is pretty bad...
The actors don't morph as a cast and the Dad's tone from the start makes me think that they casted him because he has the attitude of a serial killer with a slow mono-tone voice, and thats pretty much it.I wanted to like this film due to my likings of any horror with a half decent storyline and OK effects.
The Amityville Haunting was yet another movie filmed in the ultra- irritating 1st person style.
The movies start with saying, This footage you are about to see is real!.It start with 4 drunk teenagers who break in and then drink and have sex with there a bit of nudity , while filmed by Phone and we see some one sucked in the door and blood sprays and girls scream and cuts to black screen (This happens under 2 minutes at start of the movie.Then it cuts to a new family moving into the house Dad and wife, oldest is daughter in her teens, only one boy who's that documenting the things around the house and there a little girl You already know what roles they going to play!.The acting and script were both really horrendous, all the chacaters are so annoying, that you what something really bad to happen to them, The boy was the only one that didn't annoy me at all!This movie is not creepy or scary but do have one or two descent jumps scenes here and there and some scare are so utter silly that it will make who laugh!The movie goes from bad to worse as it goes on and it is really hard to watch this movie, i still can not believe I saw the whole movie.
Watched 20 minutes of this utter waste of film space before I couldn't handle the DT's of camera work any further.
It is really that bad, not anywhere near the hopeless camera work of Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity, 100 times worse than that.
You would think that after the other horrible movies that were filmed like this - Blair Witch Trial, etc.
The point is that new people are moving into the Amityville house and their son records everything weird that happens.There's a scene where a ghost just appears and does nothing for a full minute.
My Amityville binge has led me to this, a found footage movie set in a world where Amityville has been recognised, made into movies and books and yet another family moves into the infamous house anyway.As with all found footage films very little happens and this is 80 minutes of sheer unadulterated boredom.What makes it worse (If that's possible) is that it's not even the Amityville house despite being said multiple times that it is.
Both inside and out that becomes blatantly apparent and really is seven shades of stupid.So we have shaky cam, we have night vision cam and we have the obligatory handicam filmed by someone who absolutely positively has to record everything for some reason.In true Amityville style people change, folks turn on each other and yet somehow this is the worst one yet.The Good: It ended, that bit was good The Bad: That had to be the least sexy sex scene since the zombie humping in Braindead (1992) NOT the Amityville house The "Warning" real footage thing is getting dumbThings I Learnt From This Movie: The fact that there are no opening credits, no closing credits and therefore everyone involved is uncredited screams volumes Someone should really trademark Amityville so Joe Talentless can't keep adding it to his film.
The dialog is dire, the acting is below pre-school levels.The characters have zero likability, you'll be waiting for them to die with joy especially the kid when he whines about his 'docoooomannary' and the less said about the father character who needs a good slap when he goes into 'military dad', the better....
This is probably to lamest film to date and I can't even applaud the effort.If the acting weren't so terrible, especially the dad and son characters, it might have earned a 2.Nothing scary or believable in this movie, whatsoever.
The fact that a vast majority of the film features the family at odds over what happens, from the death of the mover to the ways it shows them adjusting to the move and how the different methods for announcing the ghostly presence in the house that goes ignored for what they perceive to know better.
That makes the film exceptionally hard to get through as the film is far more concerned with building an atmosphere of dread being in the house than anything to do with a rational thought, leaving tons of situations that play out in a rather infuriating manner of bringing the situation to their attention only to have it turn out to be shot down by their refusal to spot anything wrong with what's happening, such as the failure to recognize the tape left behind that clearly shows something is happening, the inability to spot the flies on the window which clearly should've required more attention than what's being offered here as these clearly signal something is going on inside.
Another problem to overcome is the fact that the house itself is clearly not the usual setting for the rest of the films as the place is cramped, closed off and completely removed from how the house has looked in the past that it really seems like a different location entirely.
The "actors" don't know their lines and constantly talk over each other, the script makes ZERO sense, the characters are entirely unbelievable, not to mention unlikable, and everything about the production values looks like something a high school A.V. club would put together.
It's so bad they couldn't afford an actual phone to use for the movie, and instead of using a cheap old one from a salvage shop, or even just using one of the cast or crew's phones, they pull an iPod Touch out of their buttholes and try to tell us it's a phone.
The only good thing about this film is that, after watching, I am at least 1 hour and 26 minutes closer to death..
so the movie starts with the words "what you are about to see is real" this is so not true, in fact, its another one of those Paranormal Activity "true story" plots where one person is shooting the video the whole time: it reeks of horror movie cliché.
i don't really mind the whole 'shaky camera' trend in "real" horror movies these days, but what really gets to me is the fact that these people record the whole incident but don't bother to check what they have recorded until the very last moment.
The "Shadow" (knock off of Halloween, anyone?) did not even try to look like Ronald DeFaeo, Jr. The dad was a complete and utter asshole, and the guy who played his part could not act his way out of a paper bag.
This turns out to be a found footage twist on the whole AMITYVILLE HORROR franchise, which inevitably rips off just about every found footage movie in existence.The main "inspiration" behind this film is, clearly, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, although this movie makes that film look like a masterpiece in comparison.
There's quite a bit of incident in the last five minutes (none of which makes much sense) but it comes far too late in the game to make THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING an interesting film..
This movie barely follows any of the original story or the true story happenings and attempts to make a clone of an already done-to-death found footage style film.
Stop with all the ghost documentaries and Paranormal Entity 3 references.Now,Yes,This effort has good points in suspense and shows some acting on the leads part.Erin Marie Hogan, Who is not the daughter this time around,Built a career on Paranormal Activity nude scenes.Bill Oberst ,Jr. played the sheriff in A Haunting In Salem and just has a look,None of which is here.Feel bad there wasn't much to love about this effort,Maybe Asylum just needed a break from all its Disaster/SyFy/Giant monsters ?
If you have any experience with any horror movies, you know EXACTLY which role each character is going to play.The script and acting are both horrible, which is NOT GOOD in a found footage movie.
If I was the writer of the script, I would go back to school , take some acting and writing classes and maybe try again.SOMEBODY PLEASE MAKE A GOOD FOUND-FOOTAGE MOVIE.
don't waste your time absolute rubbish the acting is abysmal so is the direction camera work and the none existent special effects this is one rushed badly written so called horror films of all time......don't get me wrong i no not every film has millions to spend on it but these cheap b movies can still be made to a better standard with more time and care better talent scouts better writers and so on to put amityville in the title is an insult to the classic and misleading director and writers and everyone else involved needs to quit my eight year old son has a better imagination and if i got my camcorder out id do a better job....i recently watched apartment 143 similar style and i enjoyed that one much more..
If I can somehow think of anything that I actually liked in this film , it may just be the hot blonde in the beginning of movie.
It's one thing that the movie tries to copy Paranormal Activities, which will be hard to beat, but this movie could have been good if it wasn't for the acting.
The acting is bad, the camera work is worse and I don't think its even the right house!!!
You could take ANY of the other Amityville films, including the really bad sequels and feel like you're watching mastery in action in comparison to this insipid piece of garbage.
First off this is one of those movies that you shouldn't take any notice of the poor reviews because i did & i didn't watch it for a long time because of the poor reviews & when i did watch it i was pleasantly surprised its by far not the worst found footage movie I've seen also its not the best far from it but given that it was probably made for £20 i think they did well with what they had,also you don't have to wait till the last half hour for something to happen so if you're like me & you're sick of trawling through the utter crap they call horror movies today you can do worse than to give The Amityville Haunting a go you to will probably be surprised as also i think its the best of the recent Amityville movies they seem to be pumping out..
The next in a series of Amityville movies after The Amityville Horror (x2) and the Amityville Asylum.The Amityville Haunting is purportedly based on a compilation of real hand-held camera and CCTV footage which depicts a series of events which surround the Benson family after they move into the old Amityville house.
Watch it if you like B-class horror movies.
Sure, we are all familiar with the whole amityville haunted house crap, but seriously, making a "found footage" film about it makes Paranormal Activity look like it won an Oscar.
Let me just say, for the record that the more these people keep making up more ghost stories about the amityville, the more people would start to wonder, again, that the house is really haunted.
It's been far too long, and those who know the true story would understand how fed up it would be like if more films based on the Amityville horror were ever released..
A family of five (mean father, weak mom, dirty older sister, annoying brother, bland young sister) move into the legendary Amityville house when strange things start to happen.
The effects are bad, just like the whole movie, and every time there is a death you don't even see it because the camera supposedly blacks out or it is just off camera.
But forgiving that it's a rip off of movies that are already out there, the acting is just down right awful.When the Tyler kid sees something for the first time, he sees a shadow of some sort, his line was..
The real Amityville house most recently sold for upwards of $900,000 and would not be purchased as a last resort by a family who "couldn't afford anything else." And, contrary to what the movie will tell you: since the tragic DeFeo murders and subsequent occupancy by the huckster Lutzes, a number of families have lived there for years at a time and reported nothing out of the ordinary.Having said all that: if you're looking for a cheap, no-budget (this IS The Asylum) horror movie, you could do worse.
The "camcorder" plot device makes the movie seems a lot less cheap than it is, and the acting isn't too terrible (although the father is such a Grade A jerk, you begin hoping for his premature death -- James Brolin he ain't).
I advise you to not watch this movie unless you like to waste time.
I mean I understand this is a low budget film but I think I could put together a better movie than this..
The Amityville Horror enters the 00s in a found footage device telling the story of the Benson family as they move into the house though its never seen or the inside architecture resemble the original.
If you want to see how not to make a good horror movie, watch this Amityville Haunting.
OK it's easier to film that way when you don't have a lot of money to put in your movie, but here it's badly used.For example the kid explaining to the camera what he just filmed at the end of every sequences is annoying and useless, same thing for the screen turning suddenly black for some seconds during all the movie.Then the movie is full of "clichés" : The teenage girl is ALWAYS on her phone and ALWAYS in bad mood, the youngest sister of course have an "imaginary" friend that turns out to be a ghost, the parents don't believing anything supernatural happens when they know the past of the house and people are dying around them or closed doors open by themselves...And of course, the acting is bad.
I watched this movie solely because I thought that it was "The Amityville Horror" (2005).
At the end of the day, this hardly counts as horror(thin plot, bad acting, and camera work aside), most of the time there isn't anything even happening.
Not to mention that you find yourself probably screaming at the movie "JUST LOOK AT THE DAMN FOOTAGE!!!"If you want to invite some friends over for a rip roaring time, you can't do much worse than this.
Acting in this film was pretty bad, (mostly from the son)I was very Aware that i was watching a movie.
Everything in the movie is similar, the poltergeist, the security cameras working in the night, the first view, and the plot, the family moves to the 112 Ocean Avenue, and everyone is killed, just like paranormal activity, but in that one only the girl lived.
The movie is filmed by one of the dead family kids via Blair Witch documentary style, and the rest of the footage is from via home security footage aka Paranormal Activity style.
Not bad for a movie that looks like I could of made myself..
Which again had me in stitches of laughter when all I wanted to do was watch a good horror movie.