Studio: Breaking Glass Pictures
Director: Calvin Morie McCarthy
Writer: Jon Hall, Calvin Morie McCarthy
Producer: Josh Dietrich, Airisa Durand, Calvin Morie McCarthy
Stars: Parris Bates, Sydney Winbush, Rebecca Morse, Conor Austin Jesse Sass, Airisa Durand, Jon Hall
Review Score:
Summary:
While house-sitting for a troubled old woman, a college student experiences unsettling supernatural visions.
Review:
According to a lonely lick of IMDb trivia, “Amityville Poltergeist” was shot under the bland title “No Sleep,” was renamed the equally bland “Don’t Sleep” during editing, and finally settled on “An Amityville Poltergeist” (eventually dropping the “An”) for its release. You know what that means. Yes, “Amityville Poltergeist” is another disposable DTV’er that became an Amityville movie after the fact, meaning it has as much to do with Amityville as it does with Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is nothing at all.
When I worked for a video game company, one of the titles we published was a Guitar Hero/Rock Band competitor. To say our licensed tracks were acquired on a much smaller budget than those two big name games would be a massive understatement. Anyway, during an internal presentation, The Commodores classic “Brick House” was used for a demo because a top suit requested it. Some salespeople who thought themselves above such staleness sneered at the selection. They asked, “Don’t you have something hipper? Something more current?” After looking down the song list they said, “How about ‘Insane in the Membrane’?” Now, nothing against Cypress Hill, but even back then, “Insane in the Membrane” was already 15 years old. The game’s producer and I wondered, “Wait, this is what they think is fresh music?”
Amityville movies remind me of this anecdote because I always picture a cheugy B-movie distributor who thinks he’s a genius by insisting, “Amityville! That’s how we sell this! Kids today still love that old haunted house, don’t they?” It’s like the “Simpsons” episode where that oblivious executive demands they get the original TV actor to play Radioactive Man in a feature film. “Um, I keep telling you ‘The Amityville Horror’ was over 40 years ago and the franchise is dead.”
Even in the year 2021, desperate distributors still believe there’s money to be made by slapping ‘Amityville’ on a label. To a small degree, I suppose there is since here I am rehashing this tired tactic yet again. Someday though, they’re going to have to reckon with the reality that “Amityville Exorcism” (review here), “Amityville Clownhouse” (review here), “Amityville Island” (review here), and too many more to mention permanently lowered the property value on that notorious name. For God’s sake, get out already! I promise you that horror fans got out decades ago.
Until the higher-ups catch on, I guess I have to talk about tragedies like “Amityville Poltergeist.” Truth be told, I’ve spent four paragraphs ripping a shady distribution strategy because that’s infinitely preferable to goofing on the filmmakers. From what I can tell, “Amityville Poltergeist’s” director is a struggling twentysomething who wouldn’t have to hear me bark if someone else didn’t retrofit his film into an Amityville entry. He probably had nothing to do with that decision. “No/Don’t Sleep” could have been another homemade thriller that died an unnoticed death in a cobwebbed corner of digital streaming. As awful as that sounds, it might be better than using ‘Amityville’ to attract angry eyes that assuredly won’t have any positive praise to offer this amateur endeavor.
What is left to say about any VOD Amityville movie at this stage of the game? They’re consistently terrible, even ones that tiptoe into the mainstream with moderately more money like “Amityville: The Awakening” (review here) and “The Amityville Murders” (review here). Whenever another Amityville film drops unexpectedly, it’s not like knowledgeable horror fans think, “Maybe this will be good. I should give it a shot.” Of course not. They always suck and they probably always will.
You might say to yourself, “Well then why do you keep watching them?” There’s no good excuse. Longtime readers know I simply have a habitual attraction to anything Amityville that I’ve tried to shake, but somehow can’t. It’s like candy. I know it’s bad for my health and holds no nutritional value, but I can’t stop shoving the stuff into my face. Unlike candy however, Amityville movies taste like trash, yet I continue consuming them anyway.
So what could I possibly reveal about “Amityville Poltergeist” that you haven’t correctly guessed based on its title alone? Would it shock you to learn the neon green cast has little to no previous acting experience? Between professional Panavision camera with color-corrected cinematography and shot-on-digital flatness largely reliant on natural light, which way do you think this film leans?
If bumps in the night, creaking doors, and brief flashes of a cheesy ghost girl bore you, and they will, you can pass the time trying to figure out what warped calendar was used for date stamps separating each scene. The story starts on “Wednesday, February 19th” (at 4:20pm *eye roll*) and progresses correctly through Friday before mysteriously reverting to February 20th again on Saturday. Perhaps the timeline had trouble keeping things straight once flashbacks went from “Saturday, January 11th” to “Sunday, January 21st,” somehow adding two days to an eight-day period. Judging by an end credit misspelled as “Speacial Thanks,” I’m going to guess numbers and letters weren’t anyone’s strong suit.
I really don’t want to be mean to the people who made this. It’s not their fault the “Amityville Poltergeist” name opened their movie to lashings they wouldn’t have received otherwise. They could have had something only family and friends knew about, harmlessly existing in indie horror obscurity. But no. Someone had to make a bad thing worse by forcibly adding an unearned Amityville association, exploiting my personal weakness while bringing negative attention to kids that never asked for it, and certainly don’t need it. I blame that person more than anybody else.
You’ll never see or hear of “Amityville Poltergeist” ever again after closing this window. Unfortunately for them, that’s likely true of everyone involved with the movie too. Then again, hasn’t that come to be the case with anything branded by the scarlet letter A for ‘Amityville’ nowadays?
Review Score: 20
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.