2024
I’m writing this from Indianapolis, where I’m finally visiting my baby sister after promising for years to come see her new house and spend an autumn weekend together. Since I’m writing this via my tablet (not the most efficient setup), this’ll be brief, but sometimes horror, like family visits, is best served in small doses. Hur hur, just kidding Melissa!
My sister isn’t a huge horror fan, but she suggested we watch the 2005 Amityville Horror remake together. While I’ve read the book and seen the 1979 original years ago, I am fairly certain that there are some plot points in terms of backstory in here that are wildly different, especially towards the end. Of course, I could be wrong, like I said, I don’t recall all of the details.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Ryan Reynolds plays George Lutz, who moves into the infamous Long Island house with his new wife Kathy (Melissa George) and her three children. The house comes with a dark history – in 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his entire family there, claiming voices in the house told him to do it. The Lutz family gets the property at a suspiciously good price, but soon discovers why as George begins to transform under the house’s influence, experiencing vivid visions of the murders while a ghostly presence threatens his new family.
One aesthetic/pop culture detail that particularly resonated with me was the KISS posters adorning one of the children’s walls. Those same posters terrorized me at my cousin’s house when I was young – perhaps planting the seeds for my lifelong fascination with the things that frighten me. Seeing them in a horror film felt like a peculiar full-circle moment.
Despite being set in 1974, the film can’t quite shake its 2000s sensibilities. I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, but there are some blurry/glitchy effects that seem very 2003- 2007 to me. Quick cuts, those choppy frame-rate effects where ghosts move in this jerky, unnatural way…I am hopeful that somebody knows what I mean, because that’s the best I can explain it!
But what really got under my skin wasn’t the supernatural elements – it was the terrifyingly realistic premise at the heart of any haunted house story: the financial trap. Imagine emptying your life savings into a house, only to discover it’s teeming with malevolent spirits. There’s no escape route when your bank account is empty. You’re stuck there, sharing space with whatever entities claimed the property first. That’s the real horror of Amityville – the crushing weight of homeownership colliding with forces that want nothing more than to shatter your sanity and claim your soul as their next basement tenant.