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Amityville Horror (The)
R3 - Hong Kong - Panorama Distributions Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak and Roger Nicholl (26th March 2006). |
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The Film
 A young family move into a house where murders took place years ago. Spooky things start happening. And the house tries to possess one of the family members to continue the cycle of evil. Depending on how old you are and how many movies you’ve seen you may be intrigued or stifling a yawn at that synopsis. Fortunately the remake of The Amityville Horror is the sort of movie that delivers exactly what you’d expect and nothing more, so it’s not a hard choice whether to bother seeing it or not based on the plot. The young family is the Lutzes. George Lutz (Ryan Reynolds) is not the father of the three kids. We never get an exact answer about what happened to their father, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference anyway. The mother, Kathy (Melissa George) is surprisingly hard to sum up in a brief phrase other than a woman who worries about her kids and looks suspicious as George goes nutty. The kids, on the other hand, are easy to sum up; Billy (Jesse James) = jerk, Michael (Jimmy Bennett) = freak, Chelsea (Chloe Moretz) = moron (and the requisite freaky little girl). Incidentally the parents look remarkably like Heather Graham and Jason Lee the first time we see them, but not after that (the loss didn’t bother me that much). They find a great mansion on Long Island for an amazingly cheap price. The realtor reluctantly tells them about the murders, but they decide to buy the place anyway. Things go well until freaky things start happening. The bulk of the movie is a long list of all the spooky things haunted houses do in haunted house movies. Taps drip blood, voices come out of the walls, ghosts appear in dreams, mirrors, etc. Some of the scares are effective, some are lame (the babysitter scene builds up well, only to end with a whimper). And a lot are either agonisingly predictable or unlikely; I mean how many fridge doors have the exact magnetic letters and apostrophes to be rearranged into "Katch ‘em and Kill ‘em"? (Just checked my fridge, it doesn’t). The-ghost-is-behind-you scenes aside, when the house tries to possess George it is done pretty well. His level of possession and insanity is built up in a well structured and well acted manner. It’s this that keeps the film from being a laughable collection of clichéd scenes. And while you may be wondering why the family doesn’t just move out or ditch the psycho, the explanations for their staying are just believable enough to keep the movie going. Only in the last scene do things simply fly off the rails. Without revealing details, it seems to take Kathy and awfully long time to drive back from town, and she gets back at an awfully convenient time. And I didn’t buy that Father Callaway (Philip Baker Hall) would wait so long to say what he said. And I don’t find the last part scary enough for a climax. But, if you want a reasonably scary haunted house film, then The Amityville Horror is fine, perfect for a sleepover, if you do that sort of thing. Sure, the discordant scary sound effects every time you’re supposed to jump out of your seat get tiring, but on the whole it isn’t dull. There are a lot of s**t horror films out there, so one that just does the business and ends is worth checking out.
Video
This film is presented in its original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 this anamorphic transfer is a very good effort but can still use some improving. I was very pleased with the overall sharpness of the image, detail is easy to notice especially in the background. Colors are well rendered and balanced especially skin tones which appear natural. Blacks are bold and shadow detail is evident especially in both interior and exterior night scenes. The only flaw that I could see was the occasional shimmer, where lines seem to jump. Aside from that we have a fairly solid transfer that looks phenomenal on a big display.
Audio
There are three audio tracks on this release all of which are in English. We have a DTS-ES 5.1 Matrix surround track, a Dolby Digital 5.1 EX encoded track and finally a Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround. I chose to view the film with its DTS ES track for the purposes of this review and found it a stunner. Dialogue is clear and distortion free, as is the case with almost all recently released films. What made this track a stand out effort was its infinite depth, atmospheric directional surrounds are well placed throughout the sound space. Effects and music are also mixed well and immerse the viewer in the experience; the track is a prime example on how a horror should sound. Optional subtitles are also included in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese as well as in English.
Extras
Panorama has released a 2-disc set, the first disc includes the film only and all the extras are housed on the second disc of this set. There are 8 deleted scenes included on this disc, all of which are viewed individually, there are no intros or comments as to why these scenes where removes although one can speculate it’s due to getting the film’s runtime down to a manageable 90 minutes. The scenes included are: - Family Toast runs for 1 minute 13 seconds. In this scene the family get together to have their first dinner at their new home, George makes a toast that doesn’t really come off too well. - Kathy Buys Groceries runs for 56 seconds. In this scene Kathy freaks out the local clerks when she finds out where Kathy lives. - Kathy Gives Chelsea a Bath runs for 23 seconds, in this scene Kathy tells her daughter not to go into the boat shed ever again. - Charlie & Girlfriend Visit George runs for 1 minute 10 seconds. In this scene George’s employee comes around, but his girlfriend refuses to go into the house as she gets a bad vibe from the place. - Chelsea & Michael Argue runs for 1 minute 13 seconds, here Michael refuses to believe in his sister’s imaginary friend and almost gets killed for it. - Kathy & George Arrive To Lights Flashing runs for 1 minutes 15 seconds, after their dinner the couple arrive at home only to find the lights flashing. George passes it off as the kids playing a prank on the babysitter, but turns out to be much more than that. - Kathy & George Argue runs for 1 minute 24 seconds. They argue about Chelsea seeing the girl who was previously killed in the house. - Original Etch-a-Sketch From Dalies runs for 2 seconds and is a cut-away to what Chelsea has drawn on her etch-a-sketch. Next up we have the "On Set Peeks" this is a collection of 9 behind-the-scenes vignettes, essentially fly-on-the-wall type stuff taken during the filming of these key scenes in the film. The clips included are: - Defeo Intro runs for 2 minutes 5 seconds and takes a look at the filming of the news clips seen at the start of the film. - Home Movie runs for 2 minutes 23 seconds and take a look at the filming of the family movies used in the film. - Babysitter runs for 1 minute 49 seconds and shows us the filming of the scene where she tells Michael about the Defeo family murders. - Bathtub runs for 1 minute 53 seconds and takes a look at the scene where George is attacked by a demon while in the tub. - Chloe on the Roof runs for 3 minutes 9 seconds and takes a look at the filming of Chelsea walking on the roof and her parent’s reactions. - Boathouse runs for 2 minutes 51 seconds and takes a look at the scene where Kathy gets her hair stuck in the boat propeller. - Coffin runs for 2 minutes 17 seconds and looks at the filming of the scene where Chelsea discovers the coffins that George has made for the entire family. - The Stairs runs for 1 minute 55 seconds and takes a look at the scene where the family is running away from a now psycho George after them. - Rooftop runs for 2 minutes 36 seconds and takes a look at the scene where Kathy and the kids are on the roof trying to get away from George. The next feature is entitled Haunts these are fast cut action clips cut directly from the film to make two reels, these are: - Haunts Movies runs for 3 minutes 48 seconds and are the home movies shot for the film. - Haunts and Scares runs for 1 minute 44 seconds and is a reel of the different flash-cut scares from the film. We also have a featurette entitled "Supernatural Homicide" that runs for 17 minutes 32 seconds. This is a look at the actual events of the family murders that took place in Amityville in the mid 1970’s. We get to hear from actual investigating offers and medical examiners that worked on the case as well as from a paranormal psychic who tells us about all the supernatural stuff at work and the investigators tells us how that’s just bulls**t and that there must a logical explanation on how these murders occurred. Only problem is we really don’t know as it’s still not really known how all these people were killed and will probably never know. This is what spawned all the haunted house craziness. The second featurette is entitled The Source Of Evil" which runs for 26 minutes 27 seconds and is your basic EPK style piece that tells us about the actual events that inspired this story and the genesis on how this remake got off the ground. The clip also looks at the iconic house which is very much a character in this film, and is the most famous haunted house in America. A look at certain key scenes, the director and art department are also granted. This piece is fairly standard stuff with sound bite interviews cut into behind-the-scene stuff. I especially love the fact that everyone here seems to be peddling something, which most of the time is a dramatic character-drive horror making this film come off sounding like it’s another Psycho (1960) when it’s just a fairly straight-forward scare ‘em flick. That and also Ryan Reynolds refers to himself in the 3rd person at one stage, and that’s just weird. This Hong Kong edition drops the commentary seen on most other region releases in favor of the DTS ES track, if you’re not fussed in loosing that then this is a decent edition to pick up. I found that the "On Set Peeks" was the best extra on this disc, the deleted scenes really needed some commentary on them. Although there wasn’t a dedicated full blown documentary on the making-of these extras were somewhat satisfying.
Overall
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