Amityville II: The Possession (1982) - One of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century concerned a supposedly haunted house in a town called Amityville. The subject of first a book then a movie, it spurned on even more movies, each as much a work of fiction as the first. The one thing that was not a work of fiction was there was a mass murder of members of the DeFeo family at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville in 1974. This was referenced in the opening of the first movie and an element of the story. Amityville II: The Possession does a fictitious take on that mass murder by changing the family name, setting it in the 1980s and involving a possession ala The Exorcist.
The Montelli family has moved into the home they bought in Amityville. From the start there is an antagonistic relationship between the father and the eldest son, Sonny (like that's original). Sonny and his teenage sister, Dawn, also have an awkwardly flirty relationship. The father is loud and abusive toward his family while the mother walks a line between love and hate for him. If this weren't bad enough of a setting, a presence is in the house and begins communicating with Sonny via the headphones on his walkman style radio. Feeling the house has something evil lurking in it the mother asks a priest to come over and bless it, setting into motion events that will lead to the murder of the entire family by one of their own, and he's possessed.
The movie is essentially trying to merge several genres into a single movie, and not successfully. This initially starts off as a well directed haunted house story in the first half of the movie but then flounders and dies a deserving death in the second half that degrades into a bad made-for-TV movie before it finishes off trying to copy The Exorcist right down to the priest's self-sacrifice for the demon to take him instead of the 'innocent' boy.
I would go further into describing the movie, but what defines this film as the lowest of exploitation trash that it is, is from the start making a movie to profit off the murders of a family. They might have used the excuse that it was just based loosely on the tragedy, and loosely based in reality it was, but a movie going public is not going to see this as complete fiction when it is promoted as not only being based on a true story, but it clearly states in the advertising "this is their story". Even changing the family name and elements of what happened that night does not take away from the fact that this was just another gimmick to make a buck off of tragedy. To add to the sleaziness of what the producers of this movie did was unfounded accusations of incest and child abuse within the murdered family, and once again even with the names changed a movie going audience is going to think this reflects on the victims.
Despite excellent direction and scene structure in the early part of the film and really wonderful performances by Erika Katz and Brent Katz (real life siblings too), and being such young performers at that, I can't give this other than my lowest rating for simply being the exploitative trash it is.
I give it 1 Dagger
The Montelli family has moved into the home they bought in Amityville. From the start there is an antagonistic relationship between the father and the eldest son, Sonny (like that's original). Sonny and his teenage sister, Dawn, also have an awkwardly flirty relationship. The father is loud and abusive toward his family while the mother walks a line between love and hate for him. If this weren't bad enough of a setting, a presence is in the house and begins communicating with Sonny via the headphones on his walkman style radio. Feeling the house has something evil lurking in it the mother asks a priest to come over and bless it, setting into motion events that will lead to the murder of the entire family by one of their own, and he's possessed.
The movie is essentially trying to merge several genres into a single movie, and not successfully. This initially starts off as a well directed haunted house story in the first half of the movie but then flounders and dies a deserving death in the second half that degrades into a bad made-for-TV movie before it finishes off trying to copy The Exorcist right down to the priest's self-sacrifice for the demon to take him instead of the 'innocent' boy.
I would go further into describing the movie, but what defines this film as the lowest of exploitation trash that it is, is from the start making a movie to profit off the murders of a family. They might have used the excuse that it was just based loosely on the tragedy, and loosely based in reality it was, but a movie going public is not going to see this as complete fiction when it is promoted as not only being based on a true story, but it clearly states in the advertising "this is their story". Even changing the family name and elements of what happened that night does not take away from the fact that this was just another gimmick to make a buck off of tragedy. To add to the sleaziness of what the producers of this movie did was unfounded accusations of incest and child abuse within the murdered family, and once again even with the names changed a movie going audience is going to think this reflects on the victims.
Despite excellent direction and scene structure in the early part of the film and really wonderful performances by Erika Katz and Brent Katz (real life siblings too), and being such young performers at that, I can't give this other than my lowest rating for simply being the exploitative trash it is.
I give it 1 Dagger
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