Jay Anson’s 1977 true life hell house novel, “The Amityville Horror,” gave birth to an iconic American horror home. Forty plus years later, the origins of the famous abode are still being used to market everything from witches to zombies, to crazy cults. The original storyline was steeped in demonology and mental illness, but production teams are going out of their way to slap the terror town’s name on their films, in attempt to cash in on a built-in audience. This time round, director Jack Mundy puts an evil Scarecrow on the sacred land, well, kind of.
Mary and Tina have not spoken in years, due to the fact that Tina slept with and married Mary’s husband. When their mother dies and leaves them an abandoned summer camp park, the two must reunite to decide on the fate of the cursed land. As the two sisters attempt to reconnect, their daughters, Lucy and Harriet, explore the land and start to uncover the dark secrets that are seeded in the soil. The family discovers that a man named Lester molested and murdered several children during the hey day of the camp, one of the children happened to be Mary and Tina’s sister. When the families found out Lester was a monster, they torched him and left him for dead on the land. Lester has returned in the shape of a sinister scarecrow to finish off the family and anyone who steps foot on his land.
One can not knock anyone for attempting to cash in on an iconic film name, but the reach from this team, as well as the film itself, is embarrassing. First, and perhaps the most embarrassing, is the fact that the film is set somewhere in the United Kingdom, a far way off from Long Island. Even as we get a sad attempt by the cast to tie in the original DeFeo murders, the origin story that sprung the series, there is not one frame of the film that makes the audience believe they are anywhere near Amityville. The performances are more wooden than the crossed stake that the Scarecrow rest on. One decent part of the film is the design of the Scarecrow which is fairly creepy. The few and far between kills are poorly shot and laughable. With all of the fantastic weapons that litter a farmhouse, the production team sticks the Scarecrow with one of those forks that families hang on suburban kitchen walls. While the entire premise of making an Amityville film is straight out the window by the opening scene, (the car in the opening sequence has the steering wheel on the European side of the automobile) director Jack Munday does display talent. The continuity, sound, and shot selections are all professional caliber. How writer Shannon Holiday got this lazy script green lite is baffling. Calling the molesting child abductor Lester was about as creative as a dishrag, as well as simply rehashing “A Nightmare On Elm Street’s” backstory. Not satisfied enough by that lack of creativity, Holiday writes a forty-minute snooze fest during the middle of the film that consistently rehashes Tina’s betrayal, to the point where the audience is cheering for the Scarecrow to take out the unlikeable cast. A script featuring mute teenagers that get chopped up by an evil Scarecrow in an abandoned field would have played much better than this pathetic effort. In what must be the most unbelievable news in horror history, AMITYVILLE SCARECROW 2, is now in production.
Scream Score: 3/10
