Amityville: The Awakening

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Amityville the Awakening is finally here after many, many push-backs and delays. Was it worth the wait? Well like many films that use the Amityville name, not really. The cinematography is fine, the actors are okay. One of the biggest issues with the film itself is the audio, there are plenty of scenes where dialog is drowned out by background sound. The film starts off on a good step, using what looks like old police footage to explain about the Defeo murders, unfortunately from there the movie makes a steady decline into worthlessness. Instead of making the movie about the house, murders and haunting, they choose to focus on a bratty girl and her vegetable of a brother. The haunting takes a back seat to the family drama, which makes the movie even worse. Poor pacing, poor writing, the movie is less than thrilling. Let's put it this way, there's a reason why they opted for a limited theatrical release and putting it up for free on Google play in October through December. It's a film even the producers and directors can't stand behind. The reality is, the original Amityville was popular because it was portrayed as a true story, so the family drama was more humanized. With these other films, it's about the horror and this film completely ignores that.

MASS SPOILERS MASS SPOILERS MASS SPOILERS MASS SPOILERS after this film has been delayed for so long, we finally get to see it and let me sum this up new family with a comatose teenage son/brother moves into the Amityville house in the present day. our lead Belle has never heard of the houses history (defiantly not believable as 1. its the most famous haunted house story in modern history. 2. they even mentioned the films/books about the events that happened there and 3. again its the most famous haunted house story in modern history. Belle goes to her new school as is deemed a freak "because of her lipstick and the house she now lives in". she immediately clicks with a young boy who he then introduces to his "girl"friend and they insist that they watch the Amityville Horror in the actual house at 3:15am because "its when the house comes alive". when the clock turns 3:15 the power goes out (creepy right?) but forget about that important time that the events all took place around as that the first and last time something happens at that time. Belle's mum is portrayed to be abusive towards her as she believes that her twin (the one in the coma) is in the coma because of her ( when she was 15 she sent naughty pics to her at the time boyfriend who then spread them everywhere and the brother went to get revenge on the boy but fell out a window). the demonic force in the house then starts to possess the comatose brother and the mother admits that she only moved there so this could happen as she thought it would be the only way he would recover. moving on to the end now, he gets fully possessed and kills his mum and goes to kill his younger sister but Belle stops him by jumping on top on him sending them both out the window of the house (get it because that's how he got put in a coma. so clever) (oh and you may notice that's the 1st time i've mentioned the younger daughter, that's because she serves as much to this story as giving a vegan a rare rib eye steak... its just pointless). the brother then dies and Belle and her sister get on the same page about what really happened. the end. its so bad, pointless, should not exist

Not sure whether this movie was supposed to be a sequel or reboot but it was way better then that horrible movie with Ryan Reynolds from 2005 and all the other cheesy sequels like Amityville: the evil escapes, dollhouse, curse, it's about time, a new generation etc. To me the awakening felt like a good sequel to the original trilogy. It reminded me a little of part 2 the possession, just not as brutal and I liked the realism in the story when they watched the original Amityville horror DVD in the actual house (at least in the the movies) where the horror took place. The score was done really well and I liked the spooky feel and atmosphere of this film which worked well without the B-rated acting and cheap low budget special effects a lot of the sequels suffered from. All the actors in this movie did a good job making the characters feel real. Cameron Monaghan did an amazing job being possessed it was creepy. My issue with this movie was the cuts and some scenes in the trailers not shown, and in 1 scene there seemed to be a bad edit while they take James outside in his wheelchair. I wanted to know what the dialogue was before it was cut out during the conversation. I hope the director will eventually release an extended R-rated cut on DVD/blu ray with the deleted scenes and the original ending before the re- shoots. I would have preferred watching it on the big screen for my 1st time to get the full effect and can't believe after waiting 2 years it didn't get a wide theatrical release considering some of the other crap out there that did. This one deserved it & I don't know why so many people didn't like it. It was short but paced well I wasn't bored. If it does end up in my local theatre on Oct 28th i will go.