I would be hard pushed to remember the first Amityville film, which was released not long after The Exorcist, which itself sparked a series of wannabe clone horror films. The Amityville was offered as a similar, yet alternative offering based on a book, and eventually spawned as many sequels as The Police Academy series.

The story revolves around a house of horror, sin and past crimes of ill will against innocent victims. Melissa George and Ryan Reynolds leads the cast of the new family that have moved into the quaint, walton’s-esque bargain basement sale of the Century. The price you pay, it would seem, is the death of the entire family, bar that who commits the crime. So history, or in this case evil, repeats itself with the new family and we watch the nuceal family crumble apart as the man of the house turns against his loved ones.

The Amityville Horror is an unremarkable film that tries to sell on the name, to perhaps a nostalgic audience. We’ve had The Exorcist essentially remade as The Beginning, but offers similar, yet less impressive chilling moments. So, here we are again, treading the past success and turning it into a late night debacle of boredom, where the scariest thing is how Reynolds manages to shape that beaver on his face.

It’s no shock that Michael Bay had a fat pie fingerin the film, and is therefore enough to deter most people with any sense of what makes a bad film. Michael Bay will also go on to create Transformers the movie which is simply a nightmare waiting to happen, and the queue will no doubt increase as time grows closer, for those who wish to visit Bay with a baseball bat and a book on how to make films.

It’s no shock that Michael Bay had a fat pie fingerin the film, and is therefore enough to deter most people with any sense of what makes a bad film

Performances range from hysterically funny to hysterically funnier as little conviction is offered, let alone reasoning, for the events that take place. Sure, you could say it’s a horror film, and the evil spirits simply repeat history, this is backed up by the very end. Even so, you would like it in some realistic context, fantasy though it may be. That’s where it fails, aside from providing clues the size of a world atlas map of what’s coming next, the film is more formulaic than it needed to be. Even if we have seen it all before, The Amityville horror turns formulaic into a less than ordinary spectacle that will ensure comatose patients will have a zero percent chance of waking up.

So it is, we have another namesake remake or update of a film that probably didn’t require touching up. I believe the 80s first sequel offered a much more sinful, incesteous flavour of story, which at least pushed the boundries of taste. The 2005 film barely pushes the boundries of acting, it can only dream of pushing the boundries of anything else.

Melissa Geroge is plain and depressing to watch, with Reynolds seemingly eager to make the audience laugh, rather than scaring them. If anything, I would like to see Reynolds doing some comedy, as I think he has a similar ability to manage dead pan moments that Vince Vaughn has. Who knows, perhaps we’ll see him in a remake of Wedding Crashers with Eddie Murphy.

Verdict: Abomniable is harsh, but that’s exactly what this turkey is. Discard before use