Studio: Grindstone Entertainment Group
Director: Thomas J. Churchill
Writer: Thomas J. Churchill
Producer: Phillip B. Goldfine, Binh Dang, Thomas J. Churchill
Stars: Scott C. Roe, Tank Jones, Alysha Young, Michael Ferguson, Micah Fitzgerald, Kelly Lynn Reiter, Troy Fromin, Joycelyn Lew, Barry Papick, Michael Cervantes, Kole Benfield
Review Score:
Summary:
Cops and civilians trapped in a police station must fight for their lives when acid rain creates a zombie outbreak that overtakes Amityville.
Review:
Lionsgate has never been too high above detonating the occasional B-movie bomb directly onto home video. Horror fans also know them well from numerous theatrical thrillers and midrange genre titles too. But their bread gets most of its butter from major movies with big talent like “The Hunger Games” and “John Wick.”
Why then, do they have to dip into the dismal drowning pool of DTV Amityville indies? I expect bad homemade horror bearing the name of Long Island’s most notorious town from Wild Eye Releasing and Uncork’d Entertainment. Now we have to be wary of a notable Hollywood studio too? With the kind of “Twilight” money they must have in the bank, Lionsgate can’t possibly need extra loose change that badly, can they? At least they possess enough business acumen to cloak corporate’s involvement by using their Grindstone Entertainment Group subsidiary to distribute flotsam films like “Amityville Uprising.”
I don’t know if it’s because the shot is in motion or because FX are simply that shoddy, but “Amityville Uprising” opens on a skyline where a janky CGI explosion jitters like it’s trying to hold still in a bounce house during a windstorm. Some Average Joes dressed up as soldiers who’ve evidently never held rifles before then run up a carpeted stairwell that’s probably inside of an ordinary office building, but supposedly belongs to a military base. A chemical fire has created acid rain clouds, and they’re about to blanket Amityville in a storm poised to turn everyday people into bloodthirsty zombies.
Hold on though. Before we get hot and heavy, or lukewarm and light, with undead action, we first have to stay awake through a full 45 minutes, and I’m not exaggerating about that length, of police officers and morgue attendants kibitzing about vacation plans, ex-wives, fixing TVs, and other nonessential exposition. “Amityville Uprising” does another weird thing where the camera suddenly freezes the frame on each cop character during his/her first scene and introduces them with graphics identifying their names. This technique seems intended to be cool and edgy, except the sore thumbs get even redder when all anyone does after their “dun-dun!” moment is moan about breakfast sandwiches or how someone doesn’t like the nickname ‘Skeeter.’
Unlike most Amityville movies made in a weekend for less cash than it costs to pick up a Little Caesar’s Hot-n-Ready, “Amityville Uprising’s” biggest issue isn’t its awkward acting or production design put together on a dime. It’s that there’s hardly any horror at all. For more than half of its runtime, “Amityville Uprising” plays like ‘A Day in the Life’ of an average neighborhood police station, with all of the dull drama that entails.
Maybe you’d like to hear the entire sob saga about Sgt. Thomas Dash’s failed marriage and how he now has to heal his estrangement with teenage son Tommy? Maybe you’ll be amused by an ongoing gag where an angry Karen repeatedly tries to pay a traffic ticket in scene after unfunny scene? Maybe you’ll laugh at the coroner who eats a sloppy sandwich while dealing with dead bodies, which must be at least the 459th appearance of such a stereotype in cinema?
Or maybe you’d just like to see skin-melting ghouls gnawing on appendages and running around tight rooms and tighter hallways that supposedly compose a sprawling municipal building? That’s the most likely desire, since no one comes to an Amityville zombie movie thirsting for father-son bonding or cringey sketch comedy performed by people with questionable acting abilities. Unfortunately, you’re going to get far more of the latter than you are of the former, because “Amityville Uprising” is about as ditheringly dry as throwaway thrillers get.
I’ll give “Amityville Uprising” a 30/100 since that is what I gave the director’s two other Amityville efforts, “The Amityville Harvest” (review here) and “The Amityville Moon” (review here). It’s not much, but some background broadcast blather loosely connects the three movies by mentioning previous events and characters, so I admire the attempt to create a loose universe connecting Amityville’s zombies, werewolves, and whatever it was that featured in “The Amityville Harvest,” I don’t even remember. That’s another thing. I can’t say for certain if the films in Thomas J. Churchill’s Amityville “series” are getting worse, although I do know they’re still not making memorable marks.
Review Score: 30
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.