THE AMITYVILLE HORROR

The Lutzes are an ordinary American family who, in the early 1970s, are looking for a new home. The opportunity of a lifetime presents itself in Long Island, in the form of an enormous late 17th-century mansion, for sale at an incredibly low price compared to the market value. George, the family's business-savvy patriarch, asks the nervous seller "where's the catch?", and then the woman explains (rather reluctantly) the reason why the house has remained unsold for so long: a year before, within those walls, the 23-year-old Ronald De Feo had exterminated his entire family with shotgun blasts, including his six-year-old sister. Since then, the house had acquired a sinister reputation in the neighborhood, after all "houses don't kill people, people kill other people". From the very first day of their residence, the new occupants of Amityville will discover, however, that sometimes even places can kill, or rather force people to do so… It seems that ideas for horror in Hollywood have run out: in the last two years we have witnessed a real invasion of remakes of the classics of the genre or of the more recent Japanese films. "The Amityville Horror" is the last film of this series released in theaters, but it certainly will not stay for long, since "Dark Water" with Jennifer Connelly is already on the horizon. It is certainly a good product, the direction and photography demonstrate a non-negligible quality, typical of films like "Non aprite quella porta" and "L'alba dei morti viventi", to the point that the harshest criticism that can be made to "Amityville Horror" is that it is an empty copy of its predecessor from 1979, to which it is, moreover, very faithful in reconstructing the settings in a sometimes overly pedantic manner, recreating the first half of the 1970s in cars and fashion, obviously filtered through the benevolent lens of our era… Note, however, a substantial difference between the original film and the current one, a characteristic already revealed in other recent remakes: the tendency to "upgrade" the characters, decidedly too attractive to be real, like the beautiful mother with a perfectly flat stomach after three pregnancies, the patriarch with a sculpted physique worthy of a perfume advertisement for a great designer, not to mention the drugged and semi-nude babysitter (but would you entrust your children to a girl with extremely tight jeans and only a silk band covering her breast?), and this together with the "Happy Days" reconstruction of the historical period produces a polished and unrealistic effect that may bother some viewers. Despite this, the level of acting is good for almost all the actors, in particular Philip Baker Hall, engaged in the secondary role of Father Callahan (curious… the same surname as the priest in King's novel "Salem's Lot", trivia or coincidence?) who reminds us a lot of the Max Von Sydow of his best times. In short, the problem does not seem to be so much of artistic quality as purely "aesthetic". Apart from this flaw, the film flows quickly and offers some moments of tension worthy of the predecessor, and the atmosphere seems to have been well captured, thanks above all to the choice of location, in Silver Lake, Wisconsin, where the sinister pre-colonial style villa was reconstructed, while most of the interiors were filmed in an abandoned building in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. By the way, the great fame of the original film came from the fact that, like other films of the time, it was presented as inspired by a real event: in reality, George and Kathy Lutz admitted in 1995 under oath that the story was pure fiction and that their action was a stratagem to launch the feature film. The same George Lutz has recently criticized the remake, especially for the fact that the authors refused his collaboration for the project. Despite this, it can certainly be stated that "The Amityville Horror" is the most successful remake of recent years, which does not pale in comparison to its illustrious predecessor, endowed with some memorable scenes, including the final sequence that gives a shiver to more than one viewer in the audience.