Don't Go in the House -- Critics walk out of "Amityville Horror"
Salon's Stephanie Zacharek confesses that she actually walked out of "The Amityville Horror" in this review, worth reading for her comments on what's wrong with the the "relentless clubbing" of the first half of the movie and "the cycle of carelessly but often expensively made pictures that Hollywood studios are increasingly putting before us."
Slate's David Edelstein lasted only five minutes. "I'd like to believe I was propelled from that room by a beneficent spirit. Dude, I owe you a drink in the afterlife." He manages to be not just more entertaining than the movie, but more illuminating than he would have been if he had stayed with it.
Both were better off than the critics who lasted through the end of the movie, but some managed to find new ways to say that there's nothing either new or watchable here:
"From the team that decided it was a good idea to remake 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' comes this unpleasant, exploitative and stupid film." Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews
"Since 1979, you can argue that human intelligence has failed to advance. The evidence: Characters still can't keep out of basements, no matter how spooky.
You can, however, say that there has been cultural deterioration: The filmmakers have managed to take a mediocre movie and make it worse.
The horror. The horror."
Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News
"The only lasting horror in The Amityville Horror is in what it takes from your wallet." Brent Simon, Now Playing
"This replacement of irrational otherworldly imagery with a safe, comprehendible portrait of the supernatural reeks of reductive, lowest-common-denominator pandering (as usual, mainstream Hollywood fare exhibits scant faith in its audience's ability to cope with any potentially inexplicable material). Andrew Douglas's moronic and flashy remake simply offers B-grade chills while resorting to convoluted exposition to explain the unnatural goings on at 112 Ocean Ave." Nick Schager, Slant Magazine
2 comments:
Thanks for writing, Jim! I agree -- as do all critics -- that you have to evaluate a movie within the scope of its own aspirations (you can't review "Amityville Horror by saying that it's no 'Citizen Kane' but you can find that a movie like "The Shining" transcends genre to be a classic by any standard), there are plenty of critics, myself included, who give heavy dramas poor grades. A lot of us hated "The Life of David Gale" (David Edelstein used it as his all-time worst ending example in his column on twist endings). I really didn't like "Million Dollar Baby" or "Mystic River" or "The Notebook" (sorry). A lot of us loved "Mean Girls," comparing it not just to teen multiplex fodder but to the top comedies of the year. The reason I didn't give it an A was that I thought it fell apart in the last half hour, not because it was "just a teen movie." You should see what Chicago's Nick Digilio had to say about it, for example. And whatever the critics said about it, it did very well at the box office and on DVD, which means that it found its audience.
Thanks for writing! It was my disagreement with other critics that led me to become one myself, so maybe the answer to your questions is for you to do the same. Best wishes, and please comment again any time.
Nell
Exciting! Wow, thanks. I'm going to post a couple of reviews of independent films on Yahoo! this week and will try to give my thoughts on others on this blog. You can always write me at moviemom@moviemom.com to ask about any films I haven't had time to review or let me know what you think of what you've seen.
Thanks again.
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