Movie Review - The Amityville Horror

The Amityville Horror (1979)

Starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder, and Rod Steiger

Directed by Stuart Rosenberg

I know it makes me a callous individual and completely unappealing to the ladies, but I'm not an animal person.  I never really had a pet growing up and I have next to nil desire to ever have a pet.  What does this have to do with the 70s horror flick The Amityville Horror?  The final scene involves saving a family pet.  The people don't matter -- it's the pets that really count.  I laughed out loud during the final scene and it ended the movie on an incredibly sour note which is a little unfortunate because for the first half of the film, I was actually along for the ride.

The plot is really simple -- a family is murdered in their sleep in a home in Amityville, New York.  Cut to a year later and newly married husband and wife George (James Brolin) and Kathy (Margot Kidder) and Kathy's three children from a previous marriage are moving into the home.  They're aware of the history the house holds, but it's such a great deal that it's difficult to pass up.  Needless to say, within mere days, the family is finding themselves in the midst of a haunted house with spirits from the past wreaking havoc on the current residents.  

The first half of the film does a decent job of creating a nervous atmosphere, but soon, the film just falls to the typical horror standards.  We get a little bit of The Exorcist when a priest (Rod Steiger) attempts to rid the house of its demons only to find himself being attacked by the devil.  Then we get a lot of The Shining in which a father starts to crumble and begins to turn on his family.  Now, perhaps it's unfair to make that comparison as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining was released a year after this, but the book by Stephen King had already been released and the similarities are too close to be ignored (and The Shining is a whole lot better).

The whole thing's just a disappointment because I honestly thought the film was on the right track during the first hour.  Building the necessary "haunted house" atmosphere little by little, gradually increasing the tension.  However, the last hour just falls apart.  There's absolutely zero scares or thrills and it ultimately just relies on every horror cliché we've seen.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+