The Amityville Curse (2023) Review – A Ridiculous and Ugly Haunted House Mess
The Amityville Curse: Quick Verdict
The Verdict: A catastrophic and visually repellent entry into an already bloated franchise that manages to find new depths of technical incompetence. The Amityville Curse fails on every fundamental level, from a nonsensical plot involving “condo flipping” at a world-famous murder site to a total lack of chemistry among its unlikable cast. The film is plagued by “glitchy” digital scares that look more like retro FMV video game errors than genuine horror, and the direction is so disjointed that the timeline becomes impossible to follow. While a late-stage tonal shift provides a momentary spark of interest, it quickly fizzles out into a repetitive, boring slog. It is a 1.5 star disaster that serves as a grim reminder that the Amityville name has become a dumping ground for bottom-of-the-barrel cinema. There are no scares, no tension, and no reason to subject yourself to this mess. Avoid at all costs.
Details: Director: Éric Tessier | Cast: Tommie-Amber Pirie, Dillon Casey, Kenny Wong, Brendan Fehr | Runtime: 1h 31m | Release Date: 28 May 2023
Best for: Completionists who have a masochistic need to watch every single film with “Amityville” in the title.
Worth noting: Despite being marketed as a remake or prequel based on the Hans Holzer novel, this version deviates so wildly from the source material that it bears almost no resemblance to the original story.
Where to Watch: Tubi (Free)
Rating: 1.5/5 Stars
(Ugly visuals, farcical digital scares, and a complete lack of genuine horror atmosphere.)
Welcome to Knockout Horror. Today we are reviewing Tubi Original The Amityville Curse from 2023. This one is, apparently, based on Hans Holzer’s prequel novel The Amityville Haunting. Does that offer us a glimmer of hope, here? Short answer? No! Long answer? Nooooooo.
Table of Contents
Maybe the worst Amityville movie?
And that is saying something. Any veteran horror fans will remember the first Amityville Horror movie from 1979. Let’s be real, it wasn’t very good. Critics and fans like to retcon opinions on old horror movies, giving them a few extra points purely for the fact that they are old. As if they deserve merit for not having combusted into flames sometime in the past 40+ years. But The Amityville Horror is a boring and repetitive exercise in yawn-inducing horror nothingness and time hasn’t done it any favours in this respect.
“The plot here is absolutely ridiculous. Who buys the Amityville house to turn into condos and flip? I guess these guys are allergic to the massive amounts of money they could make from this as a ghost hunting hot spot.”
Surprise, surprise, the worst was yet to come and it is here today in the form of The Amityville Curse. Featuring a group of friends purchasing the famous, supposedly haunted house in the hopes of renovating it, turning into condos and flipping them for a major profit. It isn’t long before things begin to go wrong, making the group think they might have made a huge mistake.
So, for a start, the plot here is absolutely ridiculous. Who buys the Amityville house to turn into condos and flip? Aside from it being a tourist destination that barely goes a day without people taking pictures of it, who would pay the inflated cost of buying a property with such a well-known history only to avoid turning it into a horror fan hot spot and, instead, turn it into two or three condos? I guess these guys are allergic to the massive amounts of money they could make from this as a ghost hunting hot spot à la the Conjuring house.
Extremely silly throughout
So the friends are staying in the house to renovate it which explains how everything starts going wrong for them pretty quickly. I mean, you would expect that, right, with a bunch of 30+ year olds sharing a house? The thing is, this is a strange group of individuals with a bit of a sketchy history and some very thinly held together bonds. They have no chemistry and the only thing that seems to tie them together is the potential STIs they have passed on to each other and now share.
Characters begin having bizarre dreams and seeing things that aren’t there. The problem is, the way these things are illustrated looks absolutely ridiculous. Weird, almost glitchy, GIF animation style visions appear in the dreams of the characters, threatening them and attempting to look menacing, while never actually managing to look anything other than farcical. There is a distinct retro FMV video game feeling about it leaving you to wonder what exactly the makers were going for.
“The visions appear in the dreams of the characters, attempting to look menacing while never actually managing to look anything other than farcical. It all feels very cheap and incredibly silly.”
Other scares come in the form of characters talking demonically and performing involuntary actions, including someone taking a Fosbury flop out of a top floor window. It all feels very cheap and incredibly silly, robbing the movie of any suspense or shock value and actually provoking a few laughs on a number of occasions. It’s hard not to get a chuckle out of some of the shlocky visuals and the fact that someone actually thought this would be scary is completely laughable.
Not at all scary, repetitive and boring
Much of the above would be forgivable if the movie delivered on the scares, unfortunately, that just isn’t the case. The attempts to shock the viewer never feel anything other than pathetic. There is no atmosphere, no sense of tension and no feeling of threat from the supposedly menacing house. None of the visuals deliver and the constant use of voice changing software towards the end of the movie sounds ridiculous, lending a very particular brand of cheapness to the film.
There is a slight switch of tone toward the latter half of the movie which the story does benefit from. But it doesn’t really go anywhere, fizzling out in a rather anti-climactic fashion. It never delivers on the potential offered by the introduction of a character that actually had some personality. There is so little to grasp onto and, worst of all, the events during the last 10 minutes or so hint at a sequel. The whole Amityville haunting thing has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy because Amityville based horror films have been haunting the industry for years and it doesn’t look like it will stop anytime soon.
Awful camera work and direction
It doesn’t help that The Amityville Curse is an ugly looking film. There is a distinct 70s vibe about everything. It had me convinced that the movie was set somewhere around the time period of the original. So you can imagine my shock when someone mentioned podcasts. This film is ugly. Whether this is a deliberate homage or not, I am not sure? It feels awkward and makes the whole film feel a little bit visually confused. The camera work is very spasmodic, as well, frequently jittering around, moving from person to person and rarely stable. It’s not a very nice movie to look at.
This is made worse by Éric Tessier’s poor direction. Continuity issues abound leading to the movie having something of a difficult to follow timeline. This is a problem that starts immediately. With the group rushing around moving furniture and packing only to apparently have moved in only minutes later. It’s a messy film with a poorly defined sequence of events. By the midway point, it seems like 10 people have died in the space of three days. Yet the house has undergone significant renovations.
“The Amityville Curse is another awful horror movie bearing the Amityville name. It’s really bad, boring, bland, and a complete waste of time. Skip it.”
Acting is okay. For the most part, though, this is a really bland cast. They don’t seem all that interested in performing to 100% of their ability. Dillon Casey, as Frank, overacts ridiculously. I doubt there is any of the Amityville house left from him chewing the scenery. I really enjoyed Kenny Wong’s brief performance as ghost hunter Ben. Tommie-Amber Pirie, as Abigail, is fine. Jenny Raven has a hella cool name and does okay. Vanessa Smythe feels a bit awkward at times but, again, is okay. Brendan Fehr, who was also in Tubi Original Captive, is decent.
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
The Good
- Brendan Fehr: Provides a professional, if somewhat weary, performance that stands out against the more amateurish efforts of his co-stars.
- Kenny Wong: His brief role as a ghost hunter is one of the few moments where the film actually attempts to have a bit of personality.
The Bad
- Digital Effects: The “glitchy” ghost visions are unintentionally hilarious and look completely out of place in a modern horror film.
- Messy Continuity: Characters move in, renovate, and die in a timeframe that makes zero sense, making the narrative a chore to track.
- Lack of Scares: The film relies on cheap voice-changing software and repetitive “demonic” tropes that fail to generate even a single shiver.
The Ugly: The Condo Plot. An absurdly thin premise that requires the viewer to believe a group of savvy investors would buy a world-famous haunted house for “flipping” purposes without a single reference to its history until things go wrong.
Should You Watch The Amityville Curse?
No. It is a 1.5 star failure that manages to make one of the most famous haunting legends in history feel boring and cheap. Between the shaky camera work, the stilted dialogue, and the laughable scares, there is absolutely nothing here to recommend. If you want a haunted house movie, go back to the classics; this modern “curse” is one you should definitely avoid.
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