THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (2005) Starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, Phillip Baker Hall, Rachel Nichols.

Directed by Andrew Davis.

Running time: 90 minutes.

Young couple with three children buys their dream house knowing that it was host to a multiple murder spree (the real estate agent is legally obliged to tell you stuff like that but not all of them do). They move in and weird stuff starts happening. Sound familiar?

Would you risk moving in to a place like this? Considering how the market is today a lot of people would. Keeping in mind also that the title house is in Long Island give a location that a lot of buyers would salivate over.

It is based on a true story but I don't know how much of it is based on the true events and how much poetic license was taken. Quite a bit of it was fictionalized beyond a doubt and you'll see where there might be things that could have happened and things that are just thrown in for poetic license.

I have despised Ryan Reynolds since he took up with Alanis Morrisette (psst! Hey Alanis! Call me if things don't work out with the sasquatch) but he won me over a bit here with his terrific multi-dimensional performance in what could have been a one-dimensional role. For Reynolds this role provides another excellent change of pace since he was starting to resemble Chevy Chase in terms and screen persona and choice of roles.

He does a better job than James Brolin did in the 1979 version. Melissa George however gives a poor performance compared with Margot Kidder who played the same role role in the original. Ms.George looks really haggard here and looks it before she undergoes the nerve-racking experience of living in a haunted house for a month.

This movie gets a bad rap but the scene where the drugged out baby sitter gets locked in the closet is pretty scary especially because of the thing with the finger poke.

It is really quite tolerable even though it is overedited. The DVD shows a deleted scenes portion of stuff that could have all fit very nicely into the film.

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