The Amityville Horror (2005) Starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, Phillip Baker Hall, Rachel Nichols.

Directed by Andrew Davis.

Running time: 90 minutes.

Rating: Adult Accompaniment

A young couple (Reynolds and George) 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 potential buyers stuff like that but not all of them do). The couple and their kids move in and weird stuff starts happening. Sound familiar? If so you probably saw the original version of this movie or any other haunted house movie made in the past fifty years.

The Amityville horror story is based upon true events. Like conspiracy theory the narrative is constructed to fill the gap where a void of information exists. Mysterious happened in a house there. Some of what occurred was witnessed by a babysitter who was on drugs and that has been dismissed by many as simply a bad trip formed by the power of suggestion i.e. stories anout the house.

What gave the legend resonance that it still has was placing it in the context of a young family wanting what every American family is supposed to want - their own home free and clear. 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 it a location that a lot of buyers would salivate over not merely for the living conditions but the potential resale value.

This production 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 dramatic effect.

I despised Ryan Reynolds during the time he took up with Alanis Morrisette and almost married her. But he won me over a bit here with his terrific multi-dimensional performance here 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 of this story.

Australian starlet Melissa George, however gives a poor performance compared with Margot Kidder who played the same role role of young wife and mom 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. But it remains the least likely of the events in the narrative to have actually occurred in the way it is depicted.

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

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