Review: Amityville: The Awakening (2017)

This is the 19th film in the Amityville series.

What happened with this movie?  In 2014 or early 2015, I remember seeing a promising trailer.  I am a big fan of the Amityville legend.  The Amityville Horror is one of my favorite horror films.  After the third film released in the early 1980s the series fell apart.  There are some many different films with Amityville in the title, I mean they even made movies outside of the iconic house.  They would go on to use, relics from the house and say these relics were haunted.  There was a clock in Amityville 1992 and even a mirror in another film.  In 2005, it was time for a remake…which is terrible.

Synopsis:

A desperate single mother moves with her three children into the notorious, supposedly haunted, real-life Amityville house to try and use its dark powers to cure her comatose son. Things go horribly wrong.

So, this one is just another ghost story in a haunted house.  There are a few things that are a little different.  Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the mother who has three kids and her son is basically a vegetable.  He has a twin sister, Belle Thorne’s character Belle.  As any haunted house story goes, weird things happen.  Bella is new to Amityville and meets some friends, even if people are stand-offish because she lives in the Amityville house.  She is unaware of the killings from Ronny Defeo and the Lutz family.  She is always unaware that there are films based around the house.  Yes, this is a movie that exsists in a reality where the Defeo killings happened, like real life.  But also a reality where all the films have been made, from the original Amityville Horror to the prequel with Ryan Reynolds.   Which I actually like about the movie.  It worked for me with the 2014 The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which I loved.  But the story is a throw away as are the characters.  Even if there are some creepy things going on in this one.

My issues with this film were mostly how average it is.  It was nice seeing the iconic 112 Ocean Ave house in Amityville, New York back on the big screen or on my TV screen I guess.  But, it was only ok.  It is way better than anything that has come in over 20 years for the Amityville series.  I will be honest, I liked Amityville 1992 It’s About Time, literally about the clock.  Even Beyond that, it was the best attempt at an Amityville movie since the Amityville 3D from 1983, so 34 years, wow.

So, overall, I enjoyed Amityville The Awakening, but maybe I am sucker for a ghost story or something taking place in the Amityville house…Nostalgia?

IMDB.com has a raiting of 4.9, meh.

I will give Amityville The Awakening 5.5

This trailer came out in 2014 and to me, it looked pretty good, but it took forever to come out.  So what happened?

This is from Wikipedia:

The film was originally scheduled for release on January 2, 2015. However, in September 2014, it was removed from the schedule. In May 2015, it was announced the film would be released on April 15, 2016.[15]When Filmyard Holdings sold Miramax to beIN Media Group on March 2, 2016, Miramax was no longer the production company of Amityville: The Awakening. It was set to be released on April 1, 2016, but was delayed due to test screening responses and given the release date of January 6, 2017.[19] On December 16, 2016, just weeks away from the film’s January 6 release date, the film was again pushed back, this time to June 30, 2017; it was eventually removed from there as well. In September 2017, it was announced that it would be released in select theaters in the US on October 28, 2017, and for free on Google Play from October 12 to November 8, 2017.

About Ray Marek III 699 Articles
I have been watching horror films since I was 6 years old. The story, one Saturday night, my mom and I were watching movies and she fell asleep on the couch. We had the channel set on HBO and the movie we were watching ended and the next one, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. This was some time in 1986. I watched then entire film, I was sitting on the edge of my seat. When my mom woke, she asked me what just ended and I told her, “Freddy”. That was all I talked about for weeks and finally she broke down and rented more horror films for me. She rented, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre part 2, Re-Animator, Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives and Halloween II. I watched all and fell in love with horror films forever. 5 Horror Films to Watch Inferno (1980) A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) The Beyond (1981) Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives (1986) Horror of Dracula (1958)