As I get older, I try hard to be a lot more positive when I watch films and desperately try to avoid knee-jerk reactions or pretend that critiquing a work means finding only flaws—however, at the end of it all, there are still some movies, shows, books, comics, video games, etc. that I can't find any positives with. "The Amityville Asylum" is one of them.
First off, it's clear this movie was just made in order to leech a little bit of fame from the horror classic "The Amityville Horror" and this fact is made clear by the reality that the story has no effort put into it. Every twist, turn, and plot development is formulaic, cliché and grossly predictable. Things aren't made better by the seemingly lack of technical filmmaking know-how as the lighting is horrendous, the camera work is barely passable for a Vine video, and the editing is chaotic to the point that simple sequences come off unhinged and nearly impossible to determine what is occurring. The final nail in the coffin is the terrible acting. Why it's expected in Direct-to-DVDs, there usually is at least one good performer that isn't looking like they were either random strangers pulled off the street, weren't being paid, or acted like this was there moment to chew on all of the scenery they could but this film had no one that was capable of looking even adequate in their role.
There's a lot more faults to this film like a questionable set that is suppose to be a newer asylum, the pointless inclusion of scenes that feel like they were put there to actually get it to a feature length, and the director clearly not caring if the actors could actually pronounce the word "Amityville" but the reality is the film is just an exercise in bad filmmaking and the results are a tale that is equally boring and cringe-worthy. I tried really hard to find one good thing about it but I just found the whole ordeal to be taxing and the film to be below sub-par. t.
First off, it's clear this movie was just made in order to leech a little bit of fame from the horror classic "The Amityville Horror" and this fact is made clear by the reality that the story has no effort put into it. Every twist, turn, and plot development is formulaic, cliché and grossly predictable. Things aren't made better by the seemingly lack of technical filmmaking know-how as the lighting is horrendous, the camera work is barely passable for a Vine video, and the editing is chaotic to the point that simple sequences come off unhinged and nearly impossible to determine what is occurring. The final nail in the coffin is the terrible acting. Why it's expected in Direct-to-DVDs, there usually is at least one good performer that isn't looking like they were either random strangers pulled off the street, weren't being paid, or acted like this was there moment to chew on all of the scenery they could but this film had no one that was capable of looking even adequate in their role.
There's a lot more faults to this film like a questionable set that is suppose to be a newer asylum, the pointless inclusion of scenes that feel like they were put there to actually get it to a feature length, and the director clearly not caring if the actors could actually pronounce the word "Amityville" but the reality is the film is just an exercise in bad filmmaking and the results are a tale that is equally boring and cringe-worthy. I tried really hard to find one good thing about it but I just found the whole ordeal to be taxing and the film to be below sub-par. t.