Every time a new “Amityville” movie comes out, I just have to know how far it strays from the original premise of a haunted house in Amityville. Therefore, it’s time for six more movies…
AMITYVILLE KAREN (2022)
Directed by indie horror king Shawn C. Phillips, this is a simple, silly possession film.
Our Karen sits around whining and bitching, harasses businesses, and wields her power as a compliance officer. She takes Amityville wine from indie actor James Duval’s winery and hits the bottle.
Karen goes all Karen on a demon woman who comes out of her closet, but this demon woman isn’t having it. Rather than filming Karen and posting the video to social media to ruin Karen’s life, the demon possesses her.
Meanwhile, the staff at a business Karen has been trying to destroy throws a party, and Karen crashes it to start killing everyone off…and to grab a bite to eat.
So it’s sort of supernatural slasher, with sleazy sexual situations and fart and shit humor thrown in for good measure.
Basically, the Amityville name goes Troma. Do with that comparison what you will before considering checking this one out.
AMITYVILLE SCARECROW 2 (2022)
I barely have anything to say about this sequel. The first film, despite its weak attempt to link itself in any way to Amityville, proved to be a fairly decent killer scarecrow movie.
This disaster brings new victims to the same summer camp location. They sit around the campfire discussing the dark history and supernatural legend of the location, they go off to have sex, and they get killed by a hokey scarecrow that looks nothing like the creepy scarecrow in the first film.
A shirtless hunk is the highlight.
The film lacks suspense or scares, and it’s not even the supernatural scarecrow again—it’s an appropriating asshole in a mask. Yawn.
AMITYVILLE HEX (2022)
108 minutes of video chatting vloggers talking about an Amityville hex is what you can expect from this travesty that feels like a poor mashup of Unfriended and Paranormal Activity.
They each read the hex out loud live then slowly—very slowly—begin to feel weird.
If you stick around long enough you’ll see some low budget found footage POV carnage, including stabbings, shootings, and death by lawnmower.
And based on something that happens at the very end of the film, my guess would be that an “Amityville Zombies” movie is inevitable.
AMITYVILLE UPRISING (2022)
Holy crap, my guess was right. This is Amityville with zombies.
The opening clips of this little indie are officially filmed around town in Amityville, and the movie takes place in Amityville…in a police department to be exact.
A chemical explosion at the Amityville military base (fiction—there is no military base in Amityville) causes acid rain to fall. A group of people becomes trapped in the Amityville police department. There they have to contend with those who die from being out in the acid rain and come back as zombies. Eek!
There’s plenty of character drama at the station as the sky begins turning red (none of the drama of much interest), and 45-minutes into the film we get the first zombie attack.
There aren’t hordes of zombies here, but the few that do exist look pretty gnarly because the peeling skin effects are good, as are the flesh munching moments.
It’s zombie business as usual as the survivors battle the zombies, but this is most definitely one of the better low budget Amityville movies—okay, one of the better low budget zombie movies with Amityville in the title—that you’re going to come across.
There’s also a hot, tattooed daddy bear, a zombie girl that does the spider crawl, and a fatalistic ending.
THE AMITYVILLE MOON (2021)
The Amityville Moon comes from the director of Amityville Uprising (zombies) and Amityville Harvest (vampires). This time it’s an Amityville werewolf!
Actually it’s just a werewolf in a religious home for wayward girls. When a couple of girls go missing, a cute detective comes on the scene to investigate.
There’s a lot of talk between priests, nuns, and girls of the house as they work on the girls’ issues in group therapy. I ended up just biding my time waiting for werewolf attacks.
There are a few kills along the way, but most of the werewolf actions hits in the last twenty minutes. It is fun if you grew up on 80s werewolf movies featuring a person in a costume instead of CGI. There’s even a classic transformation scene.
But my favorite is a kill in which the werewolf slices off a victim’s face and she desperately tries to hold it in place. Brilliant and nasty!
AMITYVILLE IN SPACE (2022)
This is a Mark Polonia production, so that should tell you what you’re in for. So should the title Amityville In Space. But hey, at least it’s about the Amityville house.
A priest enters the house to perform an exorcism and inadvertently launches the Amityville house into space in the process.
Meanwhile, a team on a spaceship sees the Amityville house floating among the stars, so they send team members out to investigate it.
On board the house, they find the priest in suspended animation. They also encounter a disembodied corpse hand, an outer space pentagram, the infamous Amityville glowing pig eyes, and a demon in a rubber mask and a hoodie.
Eventually, the team uses the toy space gun props they’ve been carrying to battle a goofy multi-eyed monster that looks like a puppet in front of a green screen.
If you still check this one out, don’t say you didn’t make an informed decision.
