Movie Review: The Amityville Horror (1979)

The Amityville Horror was a disappointment for me. I knew next to nothing about this film (or its subsequent 45 sequels, prequels, and reboots), but I figured there’s a good cast, and I tend to love ’70s horror.

But I think the problem is this is a big budget (relatively speaking) ’70s horror movie. With the exception of Jaws, The Exorcist, and to a lesser extent The Omen, the best in ’70s horror tends to be either foreign (The Wicker Man, Deep Red) or low budget or independent (Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, It’s Alive).

This is just that kind of big budget horror that just misses the mark. I think of this as being a modern problem, but it existed even back then. The lower budget and independent stuff is where the storytelling tends to get weird and the movies can be genuinely disturbing.

Here, the filmmaking is competent and the actors are good.

And that’s mostly where my compliments end. This movie’s pretty dull all around and there isn’t a lot of subtlety to its horrific supernatural elements. It’s a movie that was basically instantly forgettable for me.

Rating: 4/10