Debating What Makes An Amityville Film [Murder Made Fiction Podcast]

After a month of Amityville texts, Jenn and I are ready to flee the iconic haunted house (just like the Lutzs did in the original 1979 film!).

It’s been a fascinating four weeks. After spending more than two years consuming Amityville titles in isolation, revisiting four of them with another person (or two since my Horror Queers co-host Trace stopped by for an episode) made for an interesting experiment.

In this week’s summary episode, we reflected on our month in Amityville. Here’s what we learned:

• The Amityville Horror (1979) is not a great film, but it did – for better or worse – help to establish many of the conventions of the haunted house subgenre. It’s also surprisingly sexy considering everyone looks frazzled (maybe that’s just the 70s-ness of it, though)
• Amityville II: The Possession (1982) is a glorious mess. It’s basically two films for the price of one: the first half is a sleazy exploitation take on the DeFeos, complete with incest; the second is a kinda dull religious possession film. And scattered throughout are great practical FX.
• The Amityville Horror (2005), which just turned a ripe 20 years old this month, is one of the more bland remakes of the 00s horror craze. Reynolds is undeniably smoking hot and the babysitter scene featuring Rachel Nichols is a classic, but the film is just lacking energy.
• Amityville: The Awakening (2017) is much better than anyone would have you believe. Yes, it has some uncomfortable ableist stuff in the mix and Bella Thorne is sleepwalking through the film, but Monaghan delivers the goods, the FX looks great, and the recognition of other Amityville films is emblematic of the contemporary entries in the “franchise.” This one is worth seeking out if you slept on it.

Why listen to the episode? Well, Jenn and I also attempt to answer the age old question: what exactly constitutes an “Amityville film”? The answer may just surprise you!



Want even more Murder Made Fiction? Be sure to check out the pod’s Patreon feed, where we have nearly 90 episodes and ~60 hours of bonus content including hour by hour coverage of Happy Face and Good American Family, which is based on the complex story of Natalia Grace.

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