Amityville II: The Possession
Sigh This is movie is just such a shame all over. There’s a scene early on, a family bust up following the first supernatural events in the house, a near-beautifully creepy scene where brushes pick themselves up and paint obscenities on the children’s bedroom wall, and we first see Ron DeFao hold a gun to his father’s head, the lights fading in and out on the scene which ends as the mother takes the gun away and walks towards the camera. I gasped, felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle up, braced myself for what was to follow. It’s as masterful a scene as any I’ve seen, but alas, the movie doesn’t keep this up for long.
In the end, to put it at its worst, it’s a really shameful rip off of The Exorcist – I mean, anyone who would deny that the director is obviously so enamoured of William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty’s creation that he decided to simply try and recreate every single base element of it needs their head examined, lol. The obviousness of this fact is astoundingly silly at times.
But then, aside from that one great early scene, there are those moments where this movie goes places that no major Hollywood horror would even be allowed let alone dare these days, and I have to admire those little flashes too. And, though they too veer ridiculously into Exorcist land towards the end, there’s not a duff visual effect in the bunch. I think they’re planning to remake this as they did the ‘79 original . . . I hope it tries to be more faithful to the true story – ditch the last half hour here and expand the first hour . . . this story climaxes with the killings, to do it any other way would simply be the wrongest of wrongs – no explanation is necessary simply because, as yet, we have none.