Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

44th Kill

Not a big fan of the "lowest rated" rules in these HoopTobers, but my OCD compels me. As OCD tends to do, that's why there's a C in OCD, I suppose. Oh God, this review risks being as boring as this movie.

The weird thing about The Amityville Curse is it's really not that badly made. It's edited competently, and acted well enough, considering. For a film with a total rating of 1.6 on Letterboxd, it's really nowhere near as appalling as I expected. But, as this film moved through its runtime, I slowly went from pleasantly surprised to almost catatonic. Unfortunately, despite being technically OK, it's actually just really fucking boring.

There's a link to the Amityville mythos in that they are in the house (I don't think it's filmed at the same house, but it was a bit hard to tell because they never give you the side-on shot which is the actual recognisable view of the house) and they make reference to the previous events. But beyond that, this becomes just a very, very vanilla haunted house story with a murder mystery subplot involving a priest getting shot in a confessional by some mysterious character who we can figure out quite easily because you can basically see the guy's face. I think these film-makers overestimated the anonymity provided by that little mesh window in the confessional booth.

Both the ghost subplot and the murder subplot are pretty underwhelming. I hesitated to give it such a low rating because its main sin is simple mediocrity, but I have to admit, this was really quite excruciating to get through. It's just a bit of a waste of time, unfortunately

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

God, it's all so unmemorable. There is a scene where Kim Coates' face gets half melted off but I didn't even notice how that happened - I think he just got burned but I don't think that's what a burn looks like. I know he dies but I just can't remember exactly how now. I may have been dozing off from time to time during this film - full disclosure. Don't judge me.