Studio: Wild Eye Releasing
Director: Dustin Ferguson
Writer: Jerimiah Douglas, Dark Infinity
Producer: Rob Hauschild
Stars: Thom Michael Mulligan, D.T. Carney, Dillon Wilson, Geovonna Casanova, Allie Perez, Freddy James, Erik Anthony Russo, Jenn Nangle, Pat Kusnadi, Esau McKnight
Review Score:
Summary:
Gangbangers steal cursed marijuana from the Amityville house and bring it back to Compton, California where the weed unleashes paranormal pandemonium.
Review:
I’ve been giving some thought, spending more time than it’s worth honestly, to how I should review DIY Amityville movies moving forward. Of course, that’s assuming I continue suffering from whatever undiagnosed brain injury compels me to keep watching throwaway trash in the first place.
The straightforward approach obviously doesn’t work. You, I, and everyone who has ever seen one of these affronts to eyes, ears, and intelligence is well aware that terribleness is a trait they all have in common. Going about it like Gene Siskel dissecting acting, writing, and cinematography with the same kind of academic analysis applied to mainstream movies is a purely pointless endeavor. “It sucks” simply suffices as an accurate assessment for any and all of those categories.
The lighthearted approach no longer works either. I wish I could return to that time of wide-eyed bafflement when I first discovered the existence of homemade Amityville movies as a niche subgenre in DTV entertainment. Back when their amateur awfulness was new to me, I could laugh at the unintentionally embarrassing silliness and would end up writing a flippantly funny review. The more of these junkers I sit through though, and the more I detect that these ordinary people posing as producers are being careless on purpose, the more they violently rub sandpaper all over my lifelong love of horror. Now these movies mostly sour my mood, and cause me to continually question what value any of this has to me at all.
Something created in good faith by family and friends who merely happen to be amusingly incompetent about filmmaking is not the same as cheap video vomit barfed out by bozos who can do better, but don’t. I can take the former in good humor. The latter will never be anything other than a total waste of time for everyone involved, from whoever farted the initial idea to make a movie to the poor souls who paid $4.99 to rent $1,000,000 worth of aggravating disappointment. Guess which one of those two “Amityville in the Hood” is?
After a prologue (where two unnamed Black thieves refer to one another as “muthaf*cka” and “Kunta Kinte,” yes really) comes four full minutes of a lollipop-licking prostitute bantering with a crime kingpin’s dopey henchman. They eventually agree on a twenty-dollar trick that carries a stipulation for him not to “nut in my wig.” Their verbal contract goes south when he tries to include a ride to his mom’s house in the purchase price. Cheyenne, or “Cheyanne” if you want to go by misspelled end credits that also identify a character called DeShawn as DeMarcus, instead goes inside to give the dude’s drug dealing boss a “tug and chug.” The girl then gets shot in the head for poorly performing her “slurp-off” while boss man instructs two thugs to steal back some cursed weed that was stolen from them in Amityville. Why they went to New York for marijuana when they’re based in Compton, California, I have no idea.
With skuzzy hooker hilarity like that, “Amityville in the Hood” evidently aims to announce that it isn’t to be taken too seriously. Only half of the cast gets this note however, because you also have an alcoholic detective, police chief, and various gangbangers who do in fact play everything with all the sincerity they can muster which, trust me, isn’t much at all.
Have you ever taken a potshot at a bargain basement movie by saying, “it looks like it was shot on a phone?” That’s not the insult it used to be because nowadays, smartphones can actually record high-quality footage far better than whatever camera was used here. I guess I’d have to say, “Amityville in the Hood” looks like it was shot on a phone if that phone came from 1998, had a pixel resolution akin to a Nintendo game from the same era, persistently pointed at the brightest light source possible, and filtered every frame through a tub of corn syrup.
That’s why I classify “Amityville in the Hood” as a movie that ought to know better. The director, who now goes by the name ‘Dark Infinity’ for some reason, has made numerous low-rent flicks before. Current consumer technology automates so much of the focus, white balance, and color timing that, even accidentally, it isn’t all that difficult to get decent imagery, especially if someone has done this dozens of times before. It takes more effort to concoct shoddy camerawork this shaky, blurry, and blown-out, which is why I find it impossible to believe anyone ever applied any earnest intentions at all.
Not that picture quality matters given the ugly imagery “Amityville in the Hood” splats onscreen. A lot of shots consist of random nothing like addresses on houses, wine bottles on top of cabinets, and spinning ceiling fans. And that’s only the quick cutaways. There’s also what feels like 40 minutes of montages featuring tents on sidewalks, parked cars, fences around apartment buildings, and more pointless padding that could stuff seven warehouses full of mattresses.
At least “Amityville in the Hood” only steals 70 minutes of time. Seven of those are credits and another 13 consist of clips from the director’s previous movies “Amityville Clownhouse” (review here) and “Amityville Toybox,” or “The Amityville Legacy” and “Amityville: Evil Never Dies” according to what they were called before their re-release. I suppose that’s one thing I can give “Amityville in the Hood.” It has next to nothing to do with “the hood” and features nearly no deaths or demons, but there’s a very loose continuity threading it to those other two films. I guess I’ll award pity points for doing that much.
Look, I’d love to be a champion of backyard B-movies. And I’m willing to use a micro-ruler that measures them against cellar floor standards for lo-fi horror too. But some sort of actual effort has to meet me part of the way. Barring that, a film could embrace its awkwardness by barreling directly into kooky camp instead. But this middle ground of eyesore visuals, performers doing whatever they want, and slapdash sloppiness everywhere anyone looks? It just plain sucks.
Review Score: 10
While the movie works as an atmosphere-building slow burn, the lack of substance in the story makes “Black Cab” harder to get into as a narrative.