I Watched ‘Amityville: The Awakening’ and Lived to Tell the Tale
I did it. I watched it. I watched the movie that was wrapped 3 years ago and finally released last month and I’m here to tell you…it’s not terrible!
I have’t seen a lot of Amityville movies, apparently there are 18 of them??? That’s too many damn movies about a haunted house. But, I have seen the OG version, the Deadpool remake, and this one, so you could say I’m a JV Amityville fan.
Let’s hop into this bitch.
THE RADNESS
— Cameron Monaghan play’s Bella Thorne’s vegetable brother and he’s very, very good. There are a lot of really sad and sweet moments involving him.
— META IS BACK. In this universe, the Amityville movies actually exist and they watch them and comment on the Ryan Reynolds version. Some people don’t like meta in their movies but I would inject that shit into my veins in a heartbeat. It works because it makes the house feel real and the stakes higher for the characters, even if it does follow the textbook definition of “predictable.”
— Jennifer Jason Leigh remains a treasure. She’s so good at being scary and desperate. She’s also very good at seeming like she’s hiding something beneath the surface, which is what made her character work so well in The Hateful Eight.
— Thomas Mann is good in everything. More movies would be better with Thomas Mann. Although he is a one-note character in the movie who is inexplicably forgotten halfway through, he plays the role of exposition very well.
THE BADNESS
— Bella Thorne isn’t very good in this movie. She’s actually not very good in a lot of movies.
— The ending is atrocious. The filmmakers missed a golden opportunity for a sad and scary ending but they instead went with the safe version.
— The movie is censored. You don’t actually see any of the killings, the camera never shows anyone being shot.
— Cameron Monaghan is very good at being a vegetable. But he is not good at being an intimidating killer. He comes back as a full fleshed kid with a shotgun and absolutely nobody should take that seriously because he is unintentionally funny as an evil being.
— The stakes are low. You know who lives and who dies. There are no shockers or risks taken in the movie. At no point do you feel like danger is lurking.
— You’ll never believe it, but the youngest child talks to the possessed brother throughout the movie like it’s normal.
— Jennifer Jason Leigh is badly underused.
