THE AMITYVILLE HORROR

The horror indeed. This past weekend I saw THE AMITYVILLE HORROR remake. I was excited since it was from the same writer as THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake, which was well-done, tense, and scary. He also wrote the Christian Bale starrer, THE MACHINIST, another well-received, creepy flick.

Well…two out of three ain’t bad.

The new AMITYVILLE was, dare I say…boring? For a movie less than 90 minutes, I must have looked at my watch at least six times. That is not a good thing, people. I wanted to love it. I wanted to be scared. Nope. Can’t say I did and can’t say I was. As Geoffrey so eloquently stated to me, “I’m sick of people thinking faces moving fast are scary.” I agree. It worked in THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL remake, but not here.

The other big problems I had were:

--Characterization. George’s descent into madness is so abrupt it is disarming, and not in a good way. It doesn’t work at that speed. It’s so fast I barely knew good-guy George. It reminded of me of Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING. That is a great movie and Jack was amazing, but he’s already so wacky I never felt “safe” around his portrayal of good-guy Jack Torrance. I was just waiting for crazy to come out (but when it did, it was awesome). Back to AMITYVILLE. George’s not-so-great relationship with the oldest son (apart from not being true to the book) makes it less interesting to see their dynamic. If the kid hates him, then who cares about their relationship?

--Jodi is not, people, a little girl who was murdered. It’s a demonic pig with red eyes (or something). The little girl was a movie mechanism (that failed, in my opinion). And, since we’re going with the book, the two boys slept in the room with the “window eyes.” Not the daughter. I like Geoffrey’s reason for the change: “so the little girl can stare out the window and look creepy.”

--Motivation. If someone tells me, before I buy the house, that it was the sight of gruesome murders and strange happenings, I am going to run –- not walk –- to the library and check things out. Certainly not days after the really bad stuff starts happening. Oh, and you better believe it is gonna be wayyyyy before my husband is on the verge of killing me and my children with an axe.

--Last but not least: after the ordeal, I’m sorry. But I’d get a divorce. Honey, you can keep the house and the axe. Keep it all.

I am not saying the original was a classic (as a matter of fact, the original was as maligned as the remake ), or that it even followed the book that well, but it did (contrary to high-brow critics) elicit a slow-building sense of dread. I felt for Margot Kidder as she watched James Brolin slip (not plunge) into madness. I was worried every time he woke up at 3:15 what scary thing might happen. And the end, when all hell breaks loose, the movie made me hope they’d make it out as a family.

What did the remake do well? I liked that we saw the glimpses of George seeing his family as demons, which is the reason DeFeo claimed he killed them. Still, it wasn’t enough to keep me from thinking, when the movie was almost over, “Leave. Stay. Die. I simply cannot wait for dinner.”

All right: The PROJECT GREENLIGHT round-up!

--The movie has started! Oh brother, does it look…um, not so good. The acting is pretty bad from what they are showing. It’s too early to tell, but right now it looks like a cross between NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT. Hmmm.

--John doesn’t really gel with the crew. Shocker. He seems to think that by changing things in his head that -–poof! –- it can be done lickity-split. He is finding out that isn’t the case (and he’s losing friends on the set fast). The teaser for the next episode shows his father blowing up at somebody for something (presumably yelling at John?). It should be interesting.

--The actors all look frustrated that the film is already behind and that they get ready and then don’t film. Wah. People, what did you expect? It’s Project Greenlight. Have you not seen the first two seasons or movies? Oh, wait. Probably not. (poor Erica Beeney!)

--On the plus side, the monsters look awesome, thanks to the genius of Gary Tunnicliffe.

That’s all for now. Cat and I are almost done with Act 1 of our script. Yay. She pointed out that David Duchovny wrote his movie in a week. She’s always good for that morale, you know?

I suppose it does make us want to write faster, but…

--“God damn it, that's not all! 'Cause if one of those things gets down here then that will be all!”
ALIENS