The horror remakes of the early 2000s had a lot in common. Those commonalities were often at the root of why critics panned these films. There were often hot, young WB (or later CW) stars in the leading roles. Flashy music video direction was simultaneously garish yet intoxicating in its frenzy. And the plots, what little remained salvaged from the original in some cases, were expanded upon, often to incredulous degrees (consider A Nightmare on Elm Street’s deeper Krueger mythos). Still, I love most of ‘em, not only because they were the horror movies I grew up with, but because I think they’re earnestly good movies. Of their time, sure, but still effective in their own way. Among the best is Andrew Douglas’ The Amityville Horror.
Douglas’ remake of Stuart Rosenberg’s 1979 original, itself adapted from Jay Anson’s 1977 book of the same name, is one of the hottest horror remakes of all time. I mean that in the exact way it sounds. With Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George as the leads, it’s a sexed-up, horny take on well-trod material, and beyond being pretty remarkable eye candy, that sex intrinsically augments the material. The Amityville Horror remake turns 20 this year (and is free to stream on Tubi), and we’re going to cut into it deeper than Ryan Reynolds’ abs.
And those abs are a great place to start. The original The Amityville Horror is plenty sexy. With Margot Kidder and James Brolin, it’s impossible not to be. Kidder was among her generation’s most fiery and impulsive performers, adding unpredictable zest to every role she played, whether it was Lois Lane or The Amityville Horror‘s haunted Kathy Lutz. Brolin has that innate Brolin charm, rugged and similarly unpredictable in ways impossible to turn away from. That sexual energy is often internalized, a guiding theme of the early, canonical Amityville films. Amityville II: The Possession treads similar ground with a subtextual incestuous relationship that remains a point of contention to this day.
2005’s The Amityville Horror is conspicuously and purposefully external in its sexual angst. Melissa George’s raspy, devout, and (mostly) maternal figure juxtaposes nicely with Reynolds’ unbelievably chiseled stepdad physique. Sex and sexuality are transgressive tools through which to violate enduring boundaries about what’s right or wrong, and the innate sexuality of 2005’s The Amityville Horror is all about interrogating anxieties and laying them bare (across glossy, rock-hard abs).
Consider, for instance, the very nature of the text itself. Not just this Amityville Horror but the Amityville cinematic universe as a whole, including the unrelated cash-ins that nonetheless bear the moniker. While the haunting itself remains fiercely debated—rather nicely in the My Amityville Haunting documentary, by the way—the real-life tragedy at the center is often glossed over. Ronald DeFeo Jr. really did kill his mother, father, and four siblings, and it’s not exactly decent franchise fodder.
2005’s The Amityville Horror is the first title in the series to really get to the core of just how tasteless it all is. The digital techno filmmaking contrasts nicely with the expanded mythology, and the film wisely does away with most of the religious silliness of the original. Of that film, star Margot Kidder remarked in 2009, “It was the crazy Christians who made it a hit. They wanted people to believe in the devil and possessions and haunted houses and all that hooey.”
Sex is often the antithesis of those values. It’s something to be feared and punished, yet 2005’s The Amityville Horror is so explicitly horny, so bisexually-coded, that it’s impossible to outright dismiss like critics did when the film was first released. If the original, in kind terms, probes economic insecurity and the fear of homeownership, this new Amityville Horror dismantles the myth of sexual modesty. It’s in-your-face, whether with Rachel Nichols’ babysitter or a shirtless Reynolds menacingly chopping wood in the night. What we really fear is our desires, and The Amityville Horror so delicately and so temptingly dangles them in front of us for the duration of its runtime.
Even the house itself, with its jack-o’-lantern appearance and third-floor windows illuminated like sentient eyes, cements the voyeurism. And with its true story origins, the franchise as a whole is nothing if not voyeuristic. These are private terrors made public, many of which have had considerable consequences for the persons involved. And those private terrors resonated profoundly with me. It wasn’t the “greenish-black slime,” largely absent from the remake, that terrified me, nor was it the bellowing voice demanding the Lutz family “get out.” Instead, it was what I was feeling and why I was feeling that way.
I was in late elementary school when The Amityville Horror remake was released, old enough to know I felt differently than my peers, too young to know why that was. And memes and Bottom Jail Twitter jokes aside, Ryan Reynolds in particular, had a profound impact on me. I was the house at 112 Ocean Avenue. I couldn’t stop watching. I watched the DVD privately more than a dozen times, enamored by the sheer sexual energy I was witnessing without fully understanding what that meant.
The propulsive nature of this Amityville Horror is sex. It’s Melissa George crawling into bed and disrobing. It’s the monstrous nature of Reynolds’ George Lutz, driven by some kind of primal instinct, frightening and alluring at the same time. His anger was almost an outlet for mine, anger I couldn’t conceptualize but still distinctly, often painfully, felt. I was a stranger in the boys’ locker room, afraid of where I looked and who I looked at. I had to keep my eyes shut there, but the house at 112 Ocean Avenue permitted me to open them. To ogle. To desire. To want. I was being haunted, too.
The Amityville Horror is now streaming on Tubi. Watch it. Crave it. Let it open your eyes to a sexually charged haunting whose horniness has a point. It’s more than a one-night stand. The house won’t demand you leave. It’ll be there in the morning, more than willing to talk about what happened the night before.
Categorized:Editorials