Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
George Lutz, his wife Kathy, and their three children have just moved into a beautiful, and improbably cheap, Dutch colonial mansion nestled in the sleepy coastal town of Amityville, Long Island. However, their dream home is concealing a horrific past and soon each member of the Lutz family is plagued with increasingly strange and violent visions and impulses.
A straightforward remake of the 1979 original, the 2005 Amityville Horror offers little that distinguishes it from countless other haunted house films of its era. The plot hits every expected beat without surprise or depth, and the screenplay leans heavily on genre clichés. Ryan Reynolds is serviceable but the cast broadly delivers workmanlike performances without standout moments. Cinematography and production design are competent — well-lit scares and moody atmosphere typical of mid-2000s horror remakes. Novelty is essentially nonexistent; as a derivative remake of an already well-trodden story, it adds nothing new conceptually or stylistically. The ending resolves predictably and without impact, leaving little impression beyond the final jump scare.