The Amityville Horror

Let’s get something established right off the bat: The remake of The Amityville Horror is much, much better than the 1978 original. The original was one of the worst mega-successful horror films ever made. It was long, cheap-looking, terribly acted and an embarrassment to Long Island, N.Y. It’s not a good thing for a haunted-house movie when the most horrifying image is the sight of Margot Kidder in pigtails. This is not to say that the new Amityville Horror is some sort of genre classic. It’s not. It has the makings of a decent haunted house movie, but somebody needed to slow this one down a spell. It feels rushed, as if the makers were attempting for the total opposite of the original’s snail-like pace. Sure, speeding things up in places isn’t a bad idea, but we’re talking the whole movie whipping by at a rate that makes it nearly impossible to digest anything. It’s a shame, because a decent psycho performance by Ryan Reynolds is wasted.