Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
There’s something frustrating about a film that begins with a lot of potential, and then thoroughly squanders it.
Writer/director Daniel Farrands’ The Amityville Murders is one such film. It’s one of the few “true” entries from the last dozen or so films, in that it actually tackles the Amityville story by focusing on the true crime murders of the DeFeo family. It’s well-shot, looks good, has mostly decent (albeit broad) performances.
These are all things that many of the IP cash-grab entries have been lacking.
Unfortunately it’s also incredibly sensational, relies too heavily on repetitive supernatural elements, and – most egregiously – features a distasteful ending that highlights Farrands’ unfortunate tendency to exploit real life tragedy for cash.
If the name sounds familiar, Daniel Farrands is well-known in horror circles for directing two of the genre’s most significant documentaries on longstanding horror franchises: Never Sleep Again (2010), on the Nightmare on Elm Street series and 2013’s Crystal Lake Memories, on the Friday the 13th series. He’s also been involved in docs on The Haunting in Connecticut (which he produced) and the 2005 doc Amityville Confidential.
All this to say, he has a certain amount of horror pedigree.
There are more than a few issues with The Amityville Murders, which purports to cover much of the same ground as the 1982 sequel Amityville II: The Possession. The film focuses on the DeFeo family over a period of three weeks, from late October 1974 through the night of Nov 13, when Ronald “Butch” DeFeo (John Robinson), the family’s eldest son, killed six members of his family with a shotgun as they lay sleeping in their beds.
The DeFeos are a deeply Italian family (ie: everyone is putting on very thick unconvincing accents) and family patriarch Ronnie (Paul Ben-Victor) works for the mob. Matriarch Louise (played, in a bit of inspired casting, by Amityville II’s Diane Franklin) is the doting, supportive mother who frets about her oldest children – Butch and twin sister Dawn (Chelsea Ricketts) – as they prepare to leave the nest. The other children, however, are non-entities in the film, which focuses almost exclusively on Ronnie’s abusive behaviour towards Butch and the tight bond between brother and sister. (Disappointingly for the “franchise,” there’s only one moment of implied incest: a dream sequence when Butch is high and briefly imagines his sister giving him head in his car).
Anyone familiar with the story, or anyone who has seen the original pair of Amityville films, or even anyone who pay attention to the opening scene, knows where this story is going. Farrands doesn’t so much reinvent the wheel as much as he tentatively introduces a few additional elements. This includes more emphasis on Butch and Dawn’s experiments with “summoning” the spirits in the red room in the cellar, as well as the suggestion that the pair are responsible for unleashing the shadowy figures that plague Butch’s vision as the calendar creeps towards Nov 13.
One other interesting element is the exploration of fate and acceptance. Part way through the film, Louise relates a dream she’s had where the family meets “a beautiful, terrible end. I see rain and blood and when it’s all over, I feel at peace because we’re all together [in our home] when it happens.”
This ominous prediction naturally anticipates the family’s demise, while also hinting at the supernatural prowess of the female members of the family. Butch and Dawn know how to summon because they have been taught by their grandma Nonna (Lainie Kazan), and – in the climax of the film – Dawn returns home and willingly embraces death, choosing to climb into bed and be shot by her brother, in order to fulfill her mother’s dream.
Unfortunately this is the only real element that justifies revisiting such a familiar tale. The Amityville Murders is also far too long for what it’s doing, particularly the last act. Farrands relies too heavily on Butch’s generic-looking supernatural visions, which quickly grow repetitive and dull. There’s also a throwaway subplot that suggests the mob is surveying the family home (as if to offer another explanation for the murders), but this fails to add anything of note. Throw in a litany of teen characters in the first act, all of whom disappear by the middle stretch, and large portions of the film feels like padding.
This would all be tolerable if not for the film’s conclusion. Not only does The Amityville Murder show all of the murders, including three underage kids (admittedly this isn’t that unusual for horror), but the film ends with actual crime scene photos of the real life murders, including the aforementioned underage children.
It’s gratuitous, it’s needlessly exploitative, and it’s extremely gross.
The fact that Farrands has gone on to make similarly tasteless films about the Manson murders (2019’s The Haunting of Sharon Tate), OJ Simpson (2019’s The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson), Ted Bundy (2021’s Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman) and Aileen Wuornos (2021’s Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeyman) confirms that he has discovered the lucrative potential of true crime narratives.
The point of this editorial series is to explore what kind of art gets made when a notable intellectual property becomes available to any creative. Thus far many of these have schlocky and campy low budget efforts; they’ve had a tenuous-at-best connection to the source material; some have even been in name-only or barely qualify as a feature. This is the first Amityville entry, however, that feels truly gratuitous: The Amityville Murders exists entirely for its ending, but that conclusion is so lacking in basic humanity that it undoes any and all audience goodwill.
The Amityville Murders is technically one of the best made entries in this series, but its ending is needlessly ghoulish and exploitative. It’s shameful.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Best Dialogue: At the height of the climactic storm, Nonna tells Dawn: “We’re all haunted by something. By our past. By our mistakes. By our sins.” I’m not convinced any actor could have convincingly sold this dialogue.
- Runner-Up: Floozy Donna (Rebekah Graf), in an attempt to seduce Butch, excitedly exclaims: “This song gets me so hot. It’s the best!”
- Questionable FX: The Amityville films have routinely been challenged by dicey FX, so it’s hardly a surprise that a CGI bird that flies into the window and dies doesn’t look very good.
- POV: Farrands and cinematographer Carlo Rinaldi get a lot of mileage out of overhead shots, as well as the house’s roaming point of view shots, which play like a direct homage to Amityville II.
- Elephant Actor: It’s a delight to see Robinson back on screen. The actor made his start as the non-professional lead in Gus Van Sant’s 2003 Columbine movie (which I discussed earlier this year on Horror Queers) and he’s really solid as the lead!
- The Lutzes: The final scene offers both a post-script and a brief glimpse of Kathy Lutz that ties into the events captured in the OG 1979 film, as well as the 2005 remake. It’s inevitable, but it’s also groan-worthy.
Next Time: We’re finally leaving behind 2018 and jumping ahead to 2020’s Amityville Island, the third “franchise” entry from director Mark Polonia (Amityville Exorcism and Amityville Death House).
The post ‘The Amityville Murders’ – A Ghoulish and Exploitative Look at the DeFeo Murders [The Amityville IP] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.