Amityville Karen

The second I saw Ron Bonk's name in the credits, I'm like, I know that name! He was the guy responsible for the abortion known as House Shark. And I got exactly what I expected (well, more on that later) out of good ol Ron. Namely, a dull, talky, and overlong "horror" movie.

Amityville Karen fails on nearly every level, including successfully commenting on, or even portraying Karens... but there is one saving grace in this whole cluster-F; That is the performance of Karen herself, by the beautiful Lauren Francesca. In a movie chock full of mugging, camping it up, reading haphazardly off of cue cards, severely over-improvising, and just plain being obnoxious, Francesca was not only the sole actor I felt had any talent (I'm looking at you, James Duval!), but she provided the only laughs to be had in this movie.

Yes, this is another Bonk production where you REALLY can't judge the book by its cover. How does this sound to you? Wine (and beer... complete with "bros!") tastings, a winery with... wine bar?, an obnoxious wine aficionado, a wine unveiling, zoning complications, some sort of bizarre, horrible band who "performs" at the winery with an unplugged bass and mic, their conniving manager, inaudible dialogue, an overlong coda that bleeds into the credits, attempting to comment on Karens, serial killers, and assorted political BS. Oh, the new wine from Amityville is cursed. That's the bulk of the focus. Honestly, who gives an S about their stupid wine tasting, and all its red tape?! As much as I enjoyed Francesca, this movie fails as an Amityville movie, AND a Karen movie. That's the whole title!

I'll tell you why. Every character in this film is equally, if not more obnoxious than Karen is. So, I'm on HER side half the time, and when she drinks the cursed wine and goes psychotic, I couldn't WAIT for her to off these people (and... the worst offender survives to the end). Ok, Karen is supposed to be the obnoxious, entitled, and irrational person (who eternally needs to see the supervisor!). There's no one to play off of that. I just rolled with her antics! And Amityville is a totally peripheral plot point, at least as far as the official movies go.

If you're a fan of Lauren Francesca, she's very funny here, she does go psychotic, and on a killing spree. Otherwise, *snooze*...

Extras: The over-improvisor is... The director!

You know what? I was all for rating this a 1, and then at the last minute I changed my mind. Yeah it was poor, but it was fun. You get an air of authenticity that you just don't get from a well-polished movie. Stuff like forgetting lines and improvising and stuff like that usually isn't captured on film.

The fact it took them 5 days to make is no surprise, they were obviously on a budget and a timescale. They could have invested some of their money in a better mic though, some of the scenes I could hardly hear what they were saying.

I sometimes question why these people start out in these movies, and I know you have to start somewhere. And when that somewhere is here, I wonder where you actually think you're going to go. But ya know if someone offered me a part in a movie I'd probably take it.

There are a lot of indie horror people in this and behind this and none of them were able to save it because it's pretty much a mess. It starts out kind of promising with Karen karening all over the place, but the actress who plays her seems to be doing a lot of ad libbing and it's uh, not great. It's inexplicably 104 minutes long and draaagggggggssssss in so many places.

The last 15 minutes are half of the movies 58 producers each given a couple of lines to say in a "breaking news" alert that is tacked on just to give them a part in the movie for the money they contributed lol and then after that it just drops the news reel and has the rest of them saying bizarre things that seem like inside jokes nobody gets until it finally ends.

Still, James Duval can get it and Dawna Lee Heising is in this way too briefly and I'll watch anything she's in a hundred times but it actually works against the movie here because as soon as we saw her, Taylor and I both agreed she should have played Karen. Now that would have been the 5 star gold I wanted!

Honestly, this movie is horrible. Many of the actors seem to simply read their lines -- you can see their eyes moving while looking down or off-camera, clearly reading the text. The plot barely makes any sense. Many of the scenes look as though they could just be improv'd. The dialog is really bad. In addition, the costumes/dress and makeup are also ridiculous -- Francesca spends the entire time in a ridiculous wig, half the scenes feature actors who are sweating profusely, and Phillips spends the film dressed in a pair of odd shorts and a button-up white shirt that's about 3 sizes too large for him. Finally, the film clocks it an almost an hour and 45 minutes, which is about half an hour too long for the amount of story that's actually in the movie. Honestly, unless one wants to be supportive of Phillips or Francesca, there's really no reason to watch this.

This is so disappointing to me specifically, I have been looking forward to watching Amityville Karen for so long and this is so bad?! Why is that? It's really not anything. There's occasionally a funny line but this is 104 minutes (and so much of it is nonsense it could have easily been cut to 70 mins) and 90% of the jokes fall flat, not to mention Karen is horrible at being an actual Karen - half of the time she sounds so unsure of what she's saying and I think she was just ad-libbing? She isn't good at it!!! I am so upset. How could they do this to me. I want to talk to Shawn C Philip's manager.