SPOILER WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Synopsis: Oh no! I didn't notice until I was googling to find the exact title for this movie... it's another one by The Asylum! Well, that makes a lot of sense, as you will see. Anyway, today we are wrapping up our "Haunting" trilogy with this 'sequel' to
The Amityville Horror. In this movie, a family moves into the infamous Amityville house because it's all they can afford (famous houses being cheap and all), and immediately the realtor who showed them the house drops dead, then a moving guy drops dead, then everybody else who ever visits drops dead. The cops don't mind, the family doesn't mind, and eventually everyone drops dead. Found footage ensues.
Scariness Type: This is a little different from your standard found footage, simply in that there is no searching for what might lurk in the corners most of the time - it's right there. There are many many shots with ghosts (actually just ordinary people, in most cases) just standing in them, not bothering anybody. There are also some creepy ones where shadows move around, or a transparent person is lurking, or a normal person is just jammed in a corner. And occasional bits of gore as people explode.
Rating: 1/5 Why Didn't I Realize This Was An Asylum Movies.
Body Count: 7
Fun Fact: This entire family, except for the son, is deaf. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the writer's intent, but you watch the movie and try to explain it any other way. No human being could possibly ignore another so intently without simply being unable to hear them. The kid is constantly trying to talk to his parents or his sister and they just show no sign of response whatsoever. For that matter, the security guy who shows up later on is a mute. The kid asks
him questions and he at least looks at him. And looks at him. And then turns away. Nobody does that! This is bad writing!
Best/Worst Moment: Best and worst have no place in an Asylum movie. It's all the worst, which makes it the best. There's the moving guy falling down the stairs and by the time the camera gets to him (in under 2 seconds), there's a pool of blood around his head, and not a single drop more coming out. Must've been quite a gushing head wound. For a second. There's the security guy (with bizarre unexplained black ops connections??) who has an electric line fall from the sky onto him in one of the most hilarious electrocutions ever filmed. There's the dad's violent beating of a ghost, where he's just punching and kicking the air. There's his mental breakdown where he decides he's in the army again and does a bellycrawl across the living room floor after dispatching orders to his family and saluting the bookcase. It's just all amazing.
A Suspension Bridge Too Far: The acting.
Horror Tropes: Well, you got your haunted house, your kid with a camera welded to his hand permanently (and I mean
permanently, wow), your teens being murdered for having sex, your falling down stairs and breaking your neck (apparently an Asylum favorite - once in this movie, twice at least in Whaley House, maybe three times?), your kid's imaginary friend that's actually a ghost, and your family that doesn't just move out after the third or fourth unexplained death in two days.
My Take: Whaley House had some fun. This one was just terrible. It was the crazy military dad, and the terrible acting from the main kid running the camera (also everyone else, but he had to speak directly to the camera up close, with long rambling descriptions of what happened between scenes). To be honest, this movie looked a whole lot like it would have if that actual kid had really made it, with his buddies, as a fun after-school project. It even kind of seemed like the parents were his parents, just barely willing to participate, but not act, so he'd leave them alone. Wow, I'm giving myself a whole new perspective on this movie. Actually, for a middle school kid, I think he did a pretty good job after all. Congratulations, kid!
Missed Opportunity: What this movie really could've used was some semblance of logic I think. If there had been a plot, a sequence of events that tied the ghostiness together and made it make sense rather than people just randomly being killed, that would've held my interest and given me something to think about. That's a real missed opportunity right there.
The Lesson: Stop accidentally watching Asylum movies! These are the things you have to check for before you choose a movie.
