The Amityville Haunting was yet another movie filmed in the ultra- irritating 1st person style. The title has the word haunting in it, which to a lay-man like myself, lends itself to indicate there might be a chance you will be scared. I can only tell you there is no such scene. Sadly, this was an awful movie; there was so much script material, and different avenues that could have possibly been explored. Yet, the writers and Directors failed to follow any type of format that would resemble a professional movie; you might say, whatever does he means. Well, allow me to expand, this movie was filmed in such a way, that we are to assume that a child filmed it, really! Why, would anyone want to pay to see a film that has no plot, flow, professionalism, or natural progression, nothing! Yes, I am slightly perturbed, I actually was rooting for this whole family to be mutilated, and that's how annoying this movie was. I rooted and kept thinking to myself: I can't wait for this annoying kid with the camera to get it!

Prolouge: So we open with some dumb ass kids breaking into a house, to do what you might ask, well sex of course. Guess what, they get killed, hilarious movie, hilarious. They leave behind their iPhone with video of their deaths.

Act 1 So a generic family moves in to the crime scene house. And of course there is a kid filming every thing. Heres my problem so far, the kid has already recorded supernatural events, and two people die in their first day in the house. And nobody thinks something funny is going on, oh yeah, and it's incredible stupid. Another thing you notice right off the bat, the camera keeps getting distorted and keeps making a ringing noise. That literally happens throughout the rest of the film, talk about annoying. There is a lot of pointless 30 second scenes here as well. But our main character ,Tyler is the biggest loser I have ever seen. He can't act even if his life was on the line. And he also video tapes his sister while she is getting naked, what an incestuous little freak. Then we are led to the back door opening segment.

Act 2 Yes, this back down is literally the only thing that tries to scare you until the last 5 minutes of the film. All that happens here is conflict. The dad thinks Lori(sister) is sneaking out at night, so he sets up a wild home security system. Tyler enrages every one around him, he's like the paparazzi. Tyler finds the iphone which has magically hidden itself in under a counter-top. He likes what the kids are doing in the video, so he shows it to his parents, yeah I don't know why. The father is becoming increasingly psychotic. Lori is questioned harder, Tyler annoys every one, and the mom breaks down. So it turns out Lori was sneaking out when with some random boy, and they father puts him in his place. That teen boy is then killed outside by the ghost, Tyler records it and doesn't tell anyone. So the little girl of the family has been talking to a ghost for this whole time, but the father thought it was BS. That was until he saw the invisible boy on one of his camera monitors. Everyone is convinced there is a ghost.

Act 3 So what do they do, why hold down in the house of course. With only two days left before the mom takes the kids out of the house (I don't know why they just didn't go to a hotel) all they have to do is stick together. So they sleep in the same room, except for Lori. All they have to do is stay together, but instead they all leave the room by themselves in the middle of the night. Lori is the first to go in a particularly graphic and painful way, poor Lori. Then the mom dies, because she seams to have forgotten there was ghosts in the house. The son goes looking for her, and he gets the axe in about the only have way decent jump scare. And lastly the little girl is now possessed and kills the father, that reminded me of Sinister, including her final words to her father.

So the film pretty bad, but it was watchable, even if it was really stupid. Take it for what you will.

Admittedly I wasn't expecting much in the first place as this is The Asylum we're talking about, but horrors when done right do have potential to be fun regardless of any reputations. Sadly, The Amityville Haunting was every bit as bad as I'd feared and worse. An obvious starting point would be the production values. I know it's low budget, but that shouldn't be an excuse to not put any effort in. The Amityville Haunting looked as though it didn't even try. The special effects look as though they were made last minute and as if they only had 5 minutes to work on, while the photography is so slipshod it is enough to induce an epileptic fit. The sound effects and music are over-bearing and not sensitive at all to what is going on. The cheese that the dialogue has is enough to fill a cheeseburger, and there is no natural flow. The story has no atmosphere, no suspense and no surprises, in the end it is turgid, thoroughly predictable and emotionally stillborn storytelling. The characters suffer from being obnoxious and from not being developed very well at all, the direction is flat and the acting reads of do what you want to do and we'll just shoot it. All in all, cheap, amateurish and just bad. 1/10 Bethany Cox