The Amityville Curse

My expectations for any new movie with Amityville in the title are generally low, and knowing this one was brought to us by a free streaming service I figured it would look low budget. And I was right, it does, and the script is nothing more than serviceable, paint-by-numbers, haunted house horror fare. The set-up is minimal before things begin going bump in the night, and the swift pacing remains fairly consistent throughout the brief 90-minute runtime. What works best here is the cast, each of whom had to realize this project would be nothing more than a marginal paycheck. They all turn in credible performances considering the rather thin writing. A no-harm, no-foul Amityville movie that does nothing more than pass the time on a rainy day.

The Amityville franchise has always been an "also ran." This movie really showcases why this series is largely ignored. While the idea of a haunted house with a disturbing legacy is a trope, this production is marred by far more weaknesses.

The cast is merely "ok." The characters are a bit of an odd mix of semi-obnoxious to bland. All-told, no character is engaging or memorable - and I'm including the house itself as a character! This movie rests on the laurels of previous history and films, as a kind of narrative shortcut. The dark past of the house is only casually referenced, so viewers are expected to see "the house" as a credible threat by virtue of the other films or folklore.

Once past the opening sequence, the film plods about. The majority of the early chills come from poorly executed jump scares; namely things falling off shelves. A few ghostly whispers are oddly explicit, the words are crystal clear, and just a bit too well-spoken. Rather than conveying vague suggestions or even indecipherable murmurs, the whispers deliver Scrabble-worthy vocabulary.

The special effects are laughable. I am usually quite forgiving of SFX that are restricted by a paltry budget. In the case of "Curse," the money was not well-spent. The ghostly presences are distractingly poorly depicted.

All told, this film is just incompetent. It's not able to build a necessary sense of dread or mystery about the House. The cast are uninteresting, and the chills are poorly executed all around. While the Amityville franchise has never been particularly strong, this entry is a straight-up waste of your time.

The main characters fan girl over the lore and history of the house, taking away from unexpected terror. We know exactly what to expect with this movie. There is no build up to the suspense and you can expect supernatural occurrences at the start of the film. The story takes too long to really tell us any significant background on the group of friends to get us to like them enough to care about their pending demise. When the spooky stuff begins, it's more childs play with no direction. It's jump scare after jump scare. The CGI is very low quality and I feel like there were things they could have done practically with the use of effects makeup.

Another Tubi original that fails to entertain or keep me watching the movie. Struggled to get through the hour and a half running time. Actors don't do a great job, the director doesn't do a great job, and the writers didn't do a great job. Starting to lose hope that there are any originals on Tubi that aren't z level schlock.

Giving the film two stars, which is kind of harsh but I'm getting burned by too many shoddy films. I force myself to sit through them in the hopes that something will shift later on. That almost never happens. If a movie is riding on an old actor or a popular name for people to fork over their time, it's never worth that time.

Right, well I have to admit that I wasn't exactly harboring the biggest of expectations to this 2023 horror movie titled "The Amityville Curse", given the fact that the many "Amityville" movies, since the original and the remake, have been utter rubbish. Yet, I still opted to sit down and give the movie a fair chance.

And sure, I managed to sit through all 90 minutes of the movie, though I was only slightly entertained. Yeah, the storyline in "The Amityville Curse", as written by Dennis Heaton and Hans Holzer, wasn't exactly the best of storylines, nor the most thrilling either. Sure, it was watchable for what it turned out to be, but it was by no means a great movie.

The acting performances in "The Amityville Curse" were fair enough. There was only a single performer on the screen that I was familiar with, and that was Brendan Fehr, and he was hardly in the movie.

Visually then you're not in for anything grand. The movie does make use of special effects, but they are not impressive, nor among the worst of effects I have seen in movies.

All in all, then "The Amityville Curse", from director Éric Tessier, was a bland movie that came and went without leaving much of any noise. It is a movie that is very easily forgotten within a short time after having seen it. And it is essentially just another "Amityville" run-of-the-mill movie, that is nowhere near the level of the original or the remake.

My rating of director Eric Tessier's 2023 movie "The Amityville Curse" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.