My advice is to read the book and stay clear of the movie.
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Now here´s a film that fits into a category I like to call a "movie mirage." A movie mirage, quite simply, is a film that gives you an enticing, savvy, and exciting preview designed to draw you into the theater. Once you do arrive in the theater, you discover a film that is bleak, empty, and devoid of anything advertised. Mix the preview with words like "Based on a true story," and it only makes matters worse when you discover the truth. The 2005 version of "The Amityville Horror" is easily a movie mirage, as it is not the advertised oasis in the deserted sea of horror we expected.
What good qualities the film has to offer are basically stolen from other films, such as "The Ring," "The Grudge," and a touch of "The Shining." There is very little the film offers in the way of originality, and, after all, it is a remake of the film originally made back in 1979. This new version takes advantage of all the modern horror styles of quick and jerky high-speed film editing mixed with dark and brooding colors to give us the illusion of fear. Granted, the atmosphere and feel of the film make a good effort, but one cannot rely on how things look alone in order to tell a frightening story.
Where the new "Amityville Horror" mostly fails is simply telling the written story, or, for that matter, telling the truth. Even the 1979 version of the film--and I´m not saying that it is any better--takes several liberties of its own, but it did manage to follow the best-selling-novel a little closer. This newer, modernized version not only takes a few liberties of its own from Jay Anson´s novel, it also takes a few liberties from the original film. Well, let´s face it; the filmmakers took more liberties than they should ever have been allowed. I can only figure this is typical Hollywood thinking by making things seem bigger, uglier, and scarier, with far more ghosts and gore than its original story. The book itself is a chilling ghost story mixed with a slight touch of some unknown type of demonic possession--not "The Exorcist" style, but something much different--yet very little of it ever hits the level of extreme gore, and it has been duly noted that Jay Anson took liberties of his own when writing dialogue. I could give credit to director Andrew Douglas and screenwriter Scott Kosar for trying so hard to give us a true vision of horror, but they embellish the tale so much that they simply fail in their delivery. However, once I took notice that Michael Bay was one of the producers of this film; all the untruths and major flaws began to make sense.
The movie is supposed to be about one of the most well-known ghost stories ever told. It begins with Ronald Defeo (Brendan Donaldson) killing all of his family members in 1973 with a high-powered rifle inside the infamous Amityville house on 112 Ocean Avenue. Defeo would later claim that voices in the house possessed him to kill his family. This much of the story is true, and our filmmakers even go so far as to equip the scene with actual crime scene photos. However, as fabricated as Bay and his cronies tell the story, I can only assume that some of the photos were complete fakes, I don´t know. A year later George Lutz (Ryan Reynolds), wife Kathy (Melissa George), and three kids, Billy (Jesse James), Michael (Jimmy Bennett) and Chelsea (Chloe Moretz), move into the house. From there they would live in the home for twenty-eight days, then flee the place leaving all their possessions behind. Not long after, George and Kathy would tell one of the most chilling stories of paranormal activity ever recorded. However, our loving filmmakers decided to present us with distorted facts, lies, embellished characterizations, and a blatant disregard for sticking to the facts.
Here´s the truth: In 1974, the Lutz´s did find, through a newspaper ad, a reasonable price on the Amityville house that they could not refuse; meaning the price was everything they could have hoped for. They looked at it and fell in love with it. The Realtor even told them about the murders that took place in the home over a year before. Nevertheless, they purchased the house because it was simply everything they wanted and the price was right. And according to my research, they paid $80,000, which was quite the bargain for a New England-style home on Long Island. Besides the children´s names being changed for legal reasons, this is the only true element in the entire film. The rest of the movie is a complete sham!
Here are some of the misrepresentations: The house the filmmakers used looks nothing like the actual Amityville home. The only thing that comes remotely close is the creepy looking attic windows; other than that, the house used for this film is three times the size of the actual Amityville home. In the novel, Chelsea--actually known as Missy in the book--was known to play with an imaginary friend. The imaginary friend actually turns out to be a ghost named Jodie. Jodie was able to change shape and form, and the form Jodie enjoyed the most was that of a demonic pig with creepy red eyes. Oh, yes, our loving moviemakers decided to change this into the ghost of Jodie Defeo (Isabel Conner), the youngest girl murdered by her brother Ronald. The film also takes liberty in showing George as a psychotic, possessed stepfather who kills his dog with an axe, forces his stepson Billy to hold logs with his hands while George chops them in half, chokes his wife, and even tries to drown her in the boathouse; and, here´s the kicker, he chases his entire family with an axe over the steep rooftop of the house. Not one of these events ever happened, and you certainly will not find them in Anson´s novel. The fact is, in June of 2005 the real George Lutz filed a lawsuit against the studios and filmmakers for breach of contract and slander. Can you blame him? I mean, let´s just say for a moment that the real story is a hoax, does that really give the filmmakers the right to slander a person´s character to millions of moviegoers? I have to say I´m rooting for Mr. Lutz on this one. Changing the details of characters in a fictional story is one thing, but these are real people we´re talking about, and there is no excuse in the world for what the filmmakers did. Had George Lutz actually committed some of the acts shown in this film, the guy would be in jail right now.
The list of falsehoods goes on. In this new remake, a Catholic priest by the name of Father Callaway (Philip Baker Hall) comes over in an attempt to exorcise the house of whatever evil exists there. This is actually a famous part of the story as the priest is attacked by a swarm of flies and a big, booming voice from nowhere tells him to "GET OUT"! First of all, Callaway is not the real name of the priest; however, I´m sure legal reasons come into play to protect the real man from the cold cruelties of the mass media. Second of all, the priest was at the house to bless it the day the Lutzs moved in, not to perform an exorcism. Blessing a home is a common ritual done by Catholics when moving into a new home and, taking advice from a friend, Kathy and George decided to have the ritual done. In the research I did after watching the film, there is a site on the Internet that claims the entire Amityville story is a hoax and even mentions that the priest went there to perform an exorcism; this is simply not true. Once strange things began to happen in the house, the Lutzs even took it upon themselves to drive out whatever evil existed by saying the Lord´s Prayer from room to room. Of course, it didn´t work, nor was it ever brought up in the movie.
The blatant lies continue as the Lutzs´ young daughter takes a walk on top of a very steep roof in order to jump off because she claims Jodie the ghost told her to do so. This again is not true and is purely fabricated by the filmmakers. What´s even more comical is watching the parents going frantic trying to climb out on the rooftop, which seems nearly impossible for them, but it was a complete breeze for the small child. Perhaps our honest filmmakers were not thinking in terms of physics in this scene, just as they were not thinking in terms of telling the truth, just insulting the audience´s intelligence. And let´s not forget the scene with the baby-sitter, which never existed in the book but was in both versions of the movie. I have to wonder, who do Bay and his friends think they´re fooling?
The alterations of truth don´t stop there as the filmmakers give us their version of what is known as the "red room." The real George Lutz described it as a small room under the basement stairs that had been painted red and emitted a foul odor. There was really nothing more to it, other than the fact that it just sounded creepy. The moviemakers take a huge liberty by stretching the truth and fabricating their own story. They show us a George who is halfway to "Linda Blair" possessed while sitting in the basement staring at a wooden panel wall. He then begins to tear back the planks of wood, only to discover what was once a torture chamber for Native Americans. And for more lies, our humble filmmakers even add a character named Katchem who was once an evil priest that tortured and killed the Indians. In truth, and after much investigation, it was found that the Lutzs´ home did sit next to an area where Indians were treated for insanity and violent behavior. Some people have gone as far as to claim it was a burial ground, but there has been no such proof to support it. In further truth, there was nobody named Katchem and no elaborate, dark torture chamber. However, it would appear our stand-up filmmakers would beg to differ, and, after all, they strongly claim their version of the story is based on the real facts of the case.
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