The Amityville Haunting (2011)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Such a frustrating disappointment

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Found footage videos have overstayed their welcome, in my opinion.I can't believe I forced myself to watch the whole damn thing!! This is probably to lamest film to date and I can't even applaud the effort.If the acting weren't so terrible, especially the dad and son characters, it might have earned a 2.Nothing scary or believable in this movie, whatsoever. Fast forward to the last 5 minutes and you'll be good.

Moving into a new house, a family begins to experience a series of weird behaviors around them which they come to find out is the result of the previous occupant of the house coming back to seek revenge on the new family and forces them to find a way of stopping it.This here was a wholly bland and unappealing effort. Among the many problems here is the absolutely ridiculous reasoning why the family is still there in the house following these events. The fact that a vast majority of the film features the family at odds over what happens, from the death of the mover to the ways it shows them adjusting to the move and how the different methods for announcing the ghostly presence in the house that goes ignored for what they perceive to know better. That makes the film exceptionally hard to get through as the film is far more concerned with building an atmosphere of dread being in the house than anything to do with a rational thought, leaving tons of situations that play out in a rather infuriating manner of bringing the situation to their attention only to have it turn out to be shot down by their refusal to spot anything wrong with what's happening, such as the failure to recognize the tape left behind that clearly shows something is happening, the inability to spot the flies on the window which clearly should've required more attention than what's being offered here as these clearly signal something is going on inside. Another problem to overcome is the fact that the house itself is clearly not the usual setting for the rest of the films as the place is cramped, closed off and completely removed from how the house has looked in the past that it really seems like a different location entirely. This place doesn't resemble the famous house in the slightest and seems to be taken from any old house in the neighborhood so it comes across as even worse since this all makes the film look so shoddily made that there's very little chance of anything here carrying out in that kind of chilling fashion. With all these issues at hand, there's not much about the film to enjoy as it does have a couple enjoyable elements at play. These, though, are all confined to the final few minutes of the film as this one is entirely built on the action of the ghost getting into the action, from the chilling confrontation in the bedroom where it takes place completely over the security camera with no other figure on screen, the utterly chilling moments in the kitchen where the ghost finally gets to be seen in a rather terrifying sequence that's far better than the rest of the film combined and a pretty clichéd if worthwhile finale that's all the films' positives in a singularly enjoyable part. However, it's really all that the film has going for it. Rated R: Graphic Language, Violence and children-in-jeopardy

The film is ridiculous. Firstly, the interior of the home meant to pass for the historic, palatial and atmospheric DeFeo-Lutz haunted house on Long Island is clearly a modern townhouse or semi-detached. Most of the ...umm ...actors ...are completely wrong for the parts they play, mainly because the filmmakers just used the family members and friends they had available to fill the roles. The effects are beyond pedestrian and the storyline is not all that imaginative. This is not an "indie film", it's a home movie. This work is an attempt to grab a few bucks by exploiting the Amityville name before any potential viewers realize that it sucks and has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual events or location of the 1970's American haunting. I actually resent their perception of indie horror fans' as gullible and there to be exploited in this manner. This might be the worst movie I have ever seen.

Please note: I didn't realise THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING was produced by The Asylum before I purchased it, otherwise I might have had second thoughts. This turns out to be a found footage twist on the whole AMITYVILLE HORROR franchise, which inevitably rips off just about every found footage movie in existence.The main "inspiration" behind this film is, clearly, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, although this movie makes that film look like a masterpiece in comparison. Everything about it is horrible: the acting, the style, the distinct lack of a story, in which the writer just throws everything into the mix in an attempt to make something stick (nothing does). So we get ghostly kids, intruders, doors opening on their own, murders. It's all ludicrous.The film's main character is a kid, and about half the running time seems to consist of him pointing the camera at the floor while his parents argue; this doesn't make for a good use of screen time. Instead, I was bored witless by it. The only thing that kept me watching was the bad acting of the father, which was pretty amusing. There's quite a bit of incident in the last five minutes (none of which makes much sense) but it comes far too late in the game to make THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING an interesting film.