The Amityville Curse

No surprise this is another hopeless instalment of the schlocky Amityville Horror movie series. The first one from 1979 is far superior than the rest, but that's not exactly a compliment. Granted, for its time it had good points but it didn't work for me like Halloween or The Exorcist. This one, Amityville Curse actually starts off ok. I liked how they took the pus out of the story and just went off on a different tangen and at least tried to offer something different. The dialogue and acting were ticking more boxes than not for the first 45, but after that, the whole thing crashes down the chimney and the staircase into the red hellgate basement room.

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.

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.

I think this is Tubi's effort to prove with a minimal amount of investment that they could make an Amityville film that is still waaaay better than the majority of Amityville cr@pfests that are out there, a lot of them currently in the Tubi roster themselves.

The gore wasn't bad, the blood was the right colour, the special effects were low grade... however, it would have been nice if they made one that isn't a reboot of one of the 'canon' films... even for the sake of parody, like "The Amityville Diaper" or "The Amityville EV" or "The Amityville POTUS"...

and i think anyone who gives this a really low score has not seen any or many of the other mockbusters that continue to be churned out.

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.