There are like twelve million Amityville Horror films. I’ve seen…four? The first one, of course. Then…Amityville 2, which I’ll be discussing today (ugh), Amityville 3, a non-starter, and the one with Ryan Reynolds, or, more importantly, Chloë Grace Moretz. I used to think I really loved The Original Amityville Horror with Barbra Streisand's main piece, and also the shitty remake with my queen Chloë. I thought the first one was genuinely disturbing in that seventies sort of way, and I thought the remake was genuinely disturbing in that shitty modern remake sort of way. BUT THEN, I saw Amityville II: The Possession. All other Amityville movies – including maybe The Conjuring?? – have been rendered entirely insignificant to me since.
Now. Is this a good film? By no means. It’s not bad, but it’s not good. Like pretty much all movies. Like, 10% of movies are actually goodgood. And then people never stop fucking talking about them because it’s so rare for goodgood movies to exist, and then you end up hating these movies and labeling them “overrated” just because you’ve been annoyed so greatly by excessive praise. Or maybe that’s just me. But seriously, most films are mediocre. That being said, I don’t exactly care about a movie not being good. I don’t so much look for overall quality in films as much as I look for…interesting elements. And Amityville 2 has them diarrheaing out of the asshole.
I know…not that much about the history of the actual ~Amityville House~. I do know that a kid – an adult, actually. He was like 23, right? – killed his entire family with a shotgun or maybe not a shotgun but definitely some sort of gun/killing mechanism. Probably a shotgun. His name was Some Italian Shit. And he killed his dad…his mom…and his (three? four??) siblings. I think he had a bunch of different stories as to why he murdered them: the house told me to, my sister did it (she got killed so I don’t know how that works), I’m crazy, Bert and Ernie are in a stifling, sexless marriage, etc. etc. Amityville 2 takes the approach that Some Italian Shit (Sonny here) killed his family because his Walkman said so. Good enough for me.
Sonny’s family is the absolute fucking worse. His dad, FOR STARTERS, is a fucking asshole piece of shit played by the best dude to be playing an asshole piece of shit, Burt Young. He’s a dick, and like, unnecessarily rough on Sonny. It’s obviously that typical bullshit machismo dad thing, trying to assert dominance over his kingdom or whatever, feeling threatened by his grown man-ish son. But Sonny doesn’t really appear to be challenging him in any way. When we first see him he is all happy and excited about cigarettes or something? Gas in his car??
(Look how happy he is in this shitty, blurry ass screenshot!)
And then his dad comes out of nowhere grabbing him by the neck: YOU THINK YOU’RE A MAN NOW?? It’s like…………………..
(Sonny's face was my face. Like, chill out, Paulie. I mean, whatever your name was in this shit).
No, seriously, when Sonny arrives on the scene he is like literally skipping. Okay, not literally, but he might as well have been. And he appears in no way to be a threat to the dad. But…actually, maybe.
LOOK. I think all the ladies in the house are gushing for Sonny. The mom, the two sisters: NIAGRA FALLS. He’s a cute--for the very post-seventies--kid. (Man?)
(it's so post-seventies gq! Is this a thing? I keep saying post-seventies as if it means something. It's his entire face and being - look at it! Post-seventies, you ask? This^^^. That^^^.)
No, he’s just cute for any generation, even though he has smoker’s mouth and might be thirty years old living at home. HOW OLD IS HE?? But, yeah, the ladies are hot for Sonny Boy (ugh). And just now I’m realizing maybe this is why the dad is all over his ass all the time. Because no one is hot for Burt Young. Except me a little bit, but I have many many many mental problems.
(no I am legitimatey attracted to this. Is that one of those bubblegum cigars? Don't tell me it's not.)
Speaking of hot for him. NO. Let me go back to when the idiots first arrive at the house and just slowly make my way to that bit where Sonny fucks his sister. SO! They get to the house and we as the audience are like, Yeah, we know, we’ve already seen the first movie. Let’s get fucking to it. Thankfully, the director is like I KNOW, TOO, SHUT UP!! and jumps right into the action.
A bunch of freaky house shit happens first with the mom. She’s in the basement doing box stuff…or…wait. She’s in the basement a lot in the beginning ugh what happens first? And also there’s a scene where blood pours out of the sink? BLOOD POURS OUT OF THE FAUCET WHEN SHE TURNS IT ON AND AT FIRST SHE’S LIKE…AH!!...BUT THEN SHE JUST LAUGHS???! What? Maybe…she just thinks it’s…I don’t know…rust?? I guess maybe if that happened to me I’d convince myself it was rust or…backed up stuff from lack of use? Fracking? So, okay. I’ll accept her eventual acceptance of OBVIOUSLY BLOOD 
coming out of the tap. Then in the basement she’s with some electrician plumber house inspectory type dude. He’s fat and wearing, like, some dirty cornflower blueish workman's uniform – he fixes house shit. He’s like OH! YOU’VE GOT A SECRET ROOM HERE! Why he needs to investigate, I have zero ideas. I mean, I don’t even know what this dude’s profession is. Probably it’d help if I did. Sir, who are you? He’s someone who crawls into that ~hidden space~ - which is essentially where you put fucking spare corpse bodies you just have lying around I guess - and immediately it’s super fucking terrible. Like, flies buzzing all over the place; he puts his hand down on the ground and its covered in them. And there’s this sticky grool stuff everywhere. Some cobwebs probably, some smells for sure. Rain???
But what’s funny about this man and this scene is that he spends a lot of time in that hole in the wall just batting cobwebs about his head, sort of groaning and being disgusted and afraid. And the whole time I’m like GET OUT OF THERE. He’s in there for nearly two minutes, I swear to god, and its so awkward and nonsense making. He’s just like… “ungh…ungh…” batting around his head, sort of struggling. But…all he had to do was get out of the hole. I can’t even do it justice here because I’m terrible at explaining things (bad at writing), but it’s so funny. And this happens pretty soon into the movie. Then, another thing that happens while the mommy is in the basement is she’s groped. By wind?
“I felt it touch me,” she later details sort of erotically to her son. It reminded me of that Barbara Hershey movie where’s she raped, repeatedly, by a fucking ghost. But really it was about her sexual frustration for her son?!?!?!?! Hmmm!!
While the mom’s in the basement getting felt up by Casper, Sonny and his sister, we’ll call her Eyebrows, are up in the attic flirting LIKE HOW SIBLINGS DO.
(can you tell these aren't my own screencaps? I am just lazy and thieved them from Google. The blood sink pic I just snatched from someone else's review about this shit. The Internet: Lawless. Except that's not even true. Have you seen Lawless, though? Tom Hardy is essentially a fucking bear. A grumpy lil grizzly bear in tattered old timey sweaters. You never knew you needed it, until you got it. Wait...what am i)
Flowers in the attic, indeed. My big issue (not really) with this movie was how…the house was sort of blamed for all the family’s problems, and eventually their deaths. But no, I don’t fucking think so. This family was clearly very fucked up and damaged beyond repair long before they ever arrived at Amityville. Despite Sonny being “possessed”, I strongly feel like, had they never come to Amityville, he would have still murdered his entire family. Like, that was already set in fucking place. Another thing that was absolutely guaranteed, was Sonny and Eyebrows doing the fucky. …… ………… When Sonny comes on to Eyebrows he is allegedly “possessed”. So it’s The Demon making the moves on his sister (whatever). BUT, there’s no demon possessing Eyebrows. She is a very willing participant, which makes me sound like some lawyer defending a rapist on trial, but it’s true this time! Eyebrows just goes along! Ugh…I couldn’t hold out and talk about the other totally less interesting shit before I got to my favorite plot thing to happen: incest! So…I don’t know how old Eyebrows is. I want to randomly say 13, just to make it worse. We see her boobs in the movie though, so for some reason I’m assuming the actress was at least 18. But she seems really young. In the attic scene, pre-fucking, Sonny and Eyebrows are teasing each other. Asking each other what their “types” are. It’s very clear they’re just into each other, and they really needed no nudge from any house ghost to push things into motion. Or, at least, they didn’t need to push Eyebrows into motion. Later, when Sonny comes to her room and tells her to pose for him, they are going to play “Photographer and Model” or whatever, she’s super-willing. And you think, oh, okay, it’s just a creepy little game where Sonny is telling his sister how beautiful she is and asking her to pose for him – nothing weird about that, I do that with my brother all the time! (Get help if that’s you.) But it gets worse, because then Sonny is like: “Take off your shirt.”
Maybe he says blouse, because this is an old-timey film (anything pre-2010). But he definitely orders her to take her ~top garment~ off. Instead of screaming for help, Eyebrows half-assedly protests. Sonny has to nudge her, but you can tell she really wants to. Oh my god, I’m so #Team Rape explaining this scene. But she definitely wants to. And then they fuck: The End. But this would have happened regardless to them moving to the supposedly ~haunted house~. And that was a huge (no, not really) issue for me. Like even way in the beginning a mirror falls off the wall and the dad instantly blames Sonny and all this fighting and ruckus ensues. Then the mom screams for them all to stop, saying how ever since they arrived at the house, all they’ve been doing is fighting. No, you stop, miss. Lies, lies, lies. Your family has been a terrible, crumbly ass piece of shit mess since the day of its fucking inception. This movie did a terrible job of making me believe this house had some sort of immense, malevolent hold on them. How the fuck are you going to show up in the discomforting, shabby ass condition you showed up in, and ask me to really believe a house is the reason for all your woes? That’s like some hungover fucking alcoholic going to the library and complaining the noise of people turning pages makes his head hurt. Maybe. But you know what else gives people headaches? Being an alcoholic. Do alcoholics even get hungover? Because, they’re like always drunk, right? Whatever. The awfully constructed point I was trying to make is, maybe the house has evil spirits. But a more put-together, less piece of shit family would have been able to weather or even resist them. You come in full of holes, entirely susceptible, and it’s your own fault for being weak, awful, terrible, and just plain bad. Don’t blame the house, blame your horrible self and your horrible, bad life.
So Sonny kills everyone! Wait, first, there’s some other shit. A priest, for one, with a terrible comb-over toupée. (Pretend there's a great pic of his shitty scalp carpet here). What is that? The post-seventies, too-early in the eighties were fucked up, man. The mom calls the priest over to the house. Dumb, stupid, idiotic. He gets there, all hellfire breaks loose. The kitchen erupts with pots and pans and silverware flying everywhere, and the Dad instantly blames the two youngest kids, who were the only ones in there. Wait. Let’s talk about the dad blaming people for shit that makes absolutely no sense.
When the mirror falls, he immediately blames Sonny. I was flummoxed, because I wasn’t sure if Sonny had been instructed to hang the mirror. But I felt like the mom hung it? Even if Sonny did, why the eff is the dad jumping up to hit him? What exactly is Sonny being punished for? Do you think he intentionally hung the mirror…badly…so it’d fall?? Or…did he just think…worthless piece of shit, can’t do anything right? Alright, fine. But then later some ~spooky~ house stuff happens, which culminates in the mom and dad going to the younger kids' room and seeing some shit drawn up on their wall essentially telling them to "dishonor thy father" and then "pigs!!" "pigs!". I think there’s…a dragon??
(would a kid ever do this? like...maybe the dragon. But dishonor thy father? What little kid knows the word "thy"? come on)
It’s some fairly disturbing graffiti, and it in no way looks like some kids did that shit. But of course here the father goes whipping off his belt to beat them. Their excuse for how it got that way though is hilarious: “It’s the brushes!” Which sucks, because it totally was the brushes. Should I talk about the two youngest kids really quick? When I say this entire family is Chernobyl in human form, I very much mean it, my brother! The two youngest ones, had they survived, would have turned out exactly like their older sibling counterparts. They would’ve fucked each other into oblivion and created an army of Tom Cruises. Just, inbred, robot monster disasters. Too sad for them that they perished at their brother’s hand. Too sad for them, and too sad for us. The fact that there is only one Tom Cruise on Earth is life’s greatest tragedy.
Back to the priest coming over for tea and crumpets or exorcism or whatever. The young ones are in the kitchen and the girl one (the worst) puts a plastic bag over the boy one’s head.
(fun for the whole family)
Keeps it there for too long (not long enough), and then pulls it off, kisses him, and tells him she loves him. Freaks. Then the kitchen explodes with cutlery and shit. The dad comes in, his whip-hand ready and strong. But you should see this fucking kitchen. I’m certain dishes have flown out of the top cabinets, unreachable to these children. And not even that, the destruction occurs in seconds. Kids of their size and stature would have to take all day creating that sort of mess. Is this dad a dummy head or what? Like, I get there’s no ~realistic~ explanation, but how is he just readily accepting something that makes about as much sense as the actual truth? I think he just likes to beat his family. It looks fun, and I can’t blame him, because they are gruesomely annoying. So carry-on, equally as shit brother of Adrian from Rocky.
The priest, flabbergasted by all this drama coming from a white household – even though I think they’re supposed to be Italian, so basically black – peaces the fuck out.
The priest. The priest is useless. Like, I’ve never seen anybody so fucking incompetent. One, he has terrible hair. Like Donald Trump is that a fucking exhumed cat on your head levels of awful. He has…what looks to be some sort of toupée. I think it’s a toupée, but I can’t understand why someone would get a toupée that looks awful. Like, the point is to provide the illusion you have actual hair growing out of your tundra of a scalp. But let’s be real, when has a toupée ever looked like real hair sprouting from a real scalp? None not never. And this was the eighties. If John Travolta can still look like he dipped his scalp into something at the Crayola Factory now, imagine the horror freakshow nightmares hairpieces were back then. No, I don’t have to imagine, because Exhibit A [blank card]. AND why does a priest even need a toupée? Who are you trying to look cute for? Jesus?
(sexy 4 christ)
Do you think you are fooling the altar boys? Well maybe. You’ve gotta be pretty stupid to sign up to be an altar boy. Like, you’re practically begging to be damaged permanently forever for life – but then you get to become Tom Cruise!!
So the priest’s hair is bad, which is a huge strike one against him. He also fails to assist the family at all whatsoever when he makes his first visit to the house and the kitchen thing happens. Like the father is going ham on everyone and the priest is just standing around like…ummmm. Well, maybe he tries to intervene, but it’s half-assesed as heck. And the scene is very violent. Which makes sense why he would be hesitant, but…you’re a priest. Your job, I think, is to help people. How are you going to witness such a disturbing display in someone’s home and just leave? He doesn’t even call the cops or anything. And don’t even get me started on his handling of the sister. Eyebrows goes to confessional and gives a vague confession about her tryst with the broster. She doesn’t say it was with her broham, she tells Priest it was with a friend. Then she says all this disturbing shit about how “he does it just to hurt God” etc etc blah blah blagh. It’s fucked up. I really wish I knew how old this dumb bitch is supposed to be so I could determine how fucked up. But she is at least underage, I believe, and the way she’s talking about sex it sounds like she’s being abused. Never mind the fact that they consider it a sin to have sex before marriage. She runs out on confessional, but later returns to the priest’s (father's? is it the same thing??) office. He’s all like, I think we should talk about what you said in confessional. Okay, she’s…I forget, hesitant? But you can tell she really wants to confess everything and remove this huge weight from her shoulders. She’s like on the verge of tears – all that shit. BUT THEN, Father Toupée gets a phone call just as Eyebrows is about to lay everything out. Apparently, someone has had a stroke and died. Hm. So? Do priests really need to instantly rush off--oh, wait. Yeah, maybe. I’m not religious in any way so I don’t totally know things…but I guess priests go to give final blessings or whatever for dead-os? Sure! So he abandons Eyebrows in his office. So PAUSE on the priest’s incompetence to sort of follow the storyline.
After this almost-confessional by Eyebrows in the priest’s office, it’s Sonny’s birthday and there’s a party. IT’S SO AWKWARD.
(Paulie's face, basically)
I have to say that I Cesare Borgia-style ship Sonny with pretty much everyone in his family. I can’t tell if this was intentional on the director or actor’s part, but he totally has this terribly uncomfortable (not really, I love it) sexual chemistry with all his family members. Even the kids, and even his dad who hates him because obviously he’s in love with him. And what became clear to me at the party is that the mom is crushing on her son the same way the daughter is (was?). She sees Sonny give Eyebrows this really deep-ass hug, his hands all up in her back, and she’s like livid. Shocked? No, she’s jellin’. She wants that hug. Actually, she sort of got one. Not as intense, but close efuckingnough. Terrible. So, anyway, the mom knows now at this point that Sonny is boning (ugh) his sis. The mom even confronts Eyebrows later like WHAT DID YOU DO WITH YOUR BROTHER?! Slapping her and shit. This is what really made me believe the mom was jealous. Because…why would that be your response upon learning your two children are fucking each other??? Why didn't she confront Sonny first? He’s the older brother. If anyone fucked up, it’s him. Why are you snatching your innocent ass daughter up, trying to make it seem like it was her fault? No, girl. You…you can’t be jealous of your daughter because she’s fucking your son. I mean, I get it, because Sonny is hot for the early eighties (post-seventies), and your husband is a troll, but you need to pull your life together. Too late for that, though, because he kills you. Wait, before that, and I’m returning to incompetent Father Toupée, Eyebrows calls him at his office, I guess freaking out about Sonny, who has started to turn into that monster from The Goonies?
smiley face!
smiiiiiiiile!
sorry
I feel like all this happens…maybe forty-five minutes into the movie. All of this shit happens really quickly: the family is introduced, they spew all this inverted Brady Bunch family bullshit all over the movie, Sonny has sexual chemistry with every single member of his family, he fucks one (one?) of them, then kills all of them. 45 minutes into the film. Okay, maybe…maybe it gets to an hour in, but I really feel like it was no more than fifty. And then we get the priest for the remainder of the film. I…don’t understand what the director or screenwriter or whatever was going for here. Why do we have all this screen time with Father Toupée?? I don’t even want to get into the last half of the film because…euh. It’s just…all Father Toupée trying to get an exorcism for Sonny. He’s…sigh, in jail. And, ugh, I…I don’t even care. And I love this movie. But I soso wish I could fix it. As I often do with most movies, even ones I mostly really love like this one. This movie would be perfect to me if it was just two hours of scenes with the terrible ass…Montelli family (lol their last name was apparently Montelli according to me looking it up on imdb just now – DEFINITELY WOPS). I guess, sort of, I just wish this wasn’t even a horror film. Like, if this was just a domestic family drama I’d be fucking set. This…fucking family. They are amazing in their horribleness and insanity. And I think I just really love this movie because of them, but also because of the possibility of more them. And the last half isn’t even really that bad, because at least my baby Sonny is there, looking sickly and possessed. Did I really just write all this shit trying to analyze within myself and parse apart my feelings for this movie when, really, I could have just written: I love this movie for Jack Magner and Jack Magner alone. No, not alone. Because the family unit as a whole is neverendingly (not a word) entertaining. But I was massively obsessed with Sonny. It’s my cliché eternal love for strange, sickly-looking little waif man-boys. Troubled loner boys, in tight t-shirts. Emaciated and angsty – prob due to hunger. Emaciated and creepy. Emaciated and lactose intolerant so no milk so no bone growth so really like a cardboard person but with lungs. Emaciated and from the very specific decade of the seventies (post-sixties). Or the Monty Clift rip-offs of the fifties. Timothy fucking Hutton in Ordinary People. Emaciated and Ezra Miller. Or Dane DeHaan. Manic pixie dream boy. Jk. But not really. It’s a thing. We Need to Talk About Sonny, amirite? Like, Cal from East of Eden was totally possessed by a house ghost, non??? And you know what really fucking sucks? Jack Magner, Sonny, doesn’t even fucking act anymore. No, he literally, like, ONLY DID THIS MOVIE. Oh, and he was in Firestarter. Which of fucking course I only watched because of him and he’s in it for exactly two seconds and then Drew Barrymore sets his boots on fire with her eyeballs?? SOME MESS LIKE THAT. No, seriously, have you fucking seen Firestarter? TANGERINE DREAM. GEORGE C. SCOTT NATIVE AMERICAN JANITOR??? Should I do a separate post about that mess? I really shipped Drew Barrymore and Keith David. Or David Keith. One of those. Do you know that dude is like…some ambassador for child molesters or some shit? Or…against them? The opposite of being an ambassador for them? I think he…convicts kiddie rapists?? I…no. What are you doing. End this post now omfg. But seriously, Jack Magner, where the fuck are you, my buddy??? WHY DID YOU STOP ACTING??! Ugh, maybe you were like a decade too late? Because you would have been perfect for all those post-Easy Rider ~lost rebel anti-establishment hippie youth~ movies. Oh my god, like you could have had all of Brad Dourif’s roles. You could have been…maybe raped in Scarecrow?! Ugh, so many possibilities and I will never get any of it. That’s sort of how I felt about this movie. Is it okay to like a movie more for the possibilities than what it actually is? If it’s not okay I’m going to have to stop liking literally most of the movies I like. Like, 99% of them, let’s be fucking honest. So, depression. Good night. I said good night in a nasty way, though. I don’t want you to walk away thinking I literally fucking genuinely wished you a good night. I hope you fucking die in your sleep.
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